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Fifty Years §f 
Delaware College 



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Edward N. Vallandigham 



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Fifty Years of 
Delaware College 



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1870-1920 



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Edward n/'Vallandigham 
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Newark, Delaware 



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Preface 

THIS brief historical sketch of Delaware 
College since its resuscitation fifty years ago 
the author has written as a labor of love, and 
zvith a pleasure to himself quite out of proportion 
to that which he can hope the work may give to 
even its most friendly readers. He has tried to 
avoid the dead and dry detail apt to characterise 
local history, though he does not flatter himself that 
he has achieved a narrative either brilliant or 
absorbing. As far as he rightly could also he has 
shunned whatever even the most sensitive might 
regard as a partisan tone in narrative or comment 
touching matters that have troubled the peace of 
our academic half century, as like matters have 
troubled the peace of any long period in the history 
of almost every such school throughout the land. 
Such things, however, could not be left out nor 
could they be treated in a merely colorless fashion, 
lest this modest chronicle take on an air of futility, 
if not of stupidity. Accordingly, these matters find 
their rightful place in the story, and possibly their 
due proportion, and the author can ojtly hope that 
he has refrained from aught that may set bubbling 
anew the tempestuous teapots of the past. Here, as 
elsewhere throughout this zvork, the author takes 
full responsibility for both fact and opinion, and 
freely absolves the authorities of Delaware College 



from any share whatever in such responsibility. He 
has also of set purpose neither praised nor blamed 
those still cofinected with the College, though he has 
written with cordial warmth of several no longer 
here, some of whom have left not only these 
academic shades, but as well all earthly haunts of 
living men. If too much space may seem to have 
been given to the decade of the '70's, let that error 
of taste and proportion be set down to every man's 
natural tendency to dwell with fondness upon the 
days of his youth. Perhaps this is the place for 
the author to testify that during his delightful con- 
nection with the Faculty from i8p6 to ip02 he had 
the constant sense of comradeship with men espe- 
cially distinguished for unselfish devotion to duty, 
for sincere loyalty to one another and to the authori- 
ties of the College, for peculiar freedom from petty 
mutual suspicions and jealousies. 



Re A WAKENING 



CHAPTER I 

Reawakening 

DELAWARE COLLEGE woke fifty years 
ago from its slumber of more than a decade, 
and thus resuscitated began anew the career 
that has brought it to its present development, and 
its hopeful promise for the not far distant future. 
The history of that half century, since 1870, is one 
almost of failure at moments, but of courageous 
persistence and at length of recognized success, and 
always of important usefulness. When Delaware 
College suspended its active life in 1859 it had just 
closed its first quarter century. Since 1870, the 
period covered by this narrative, it has been in 
operation twice as long, and thirteen years hence 
it will celebrate the looth anniversary of its found- 
ing, for it was chartered by the Legislature of 
Delaware in 1833, though it did not open its doors 
to students until the Spring of 1834. 

Old College of to-day was the sole considerable 
building upon the campus up to 1870 and for some 
years thereafter. It was originally, and until 
twenty years ago, a cruciform structure without the 
present wing porticos and rectilinear rear extensions 
to the wings. The cupola, now removed, was not 
part of the building in its earliest form, but was a 
familiar and conspicuous element of it for more 



than half a century. Those living alumni who 
knew Old College before the opening of the present 
century will, probably recall it all their lives as it 
then appeared, with the high wooden steps ascend- 
ing to the central portico, which was upheld by 
huge, unfluted wooden Doric columns, with its 
many-windowed wings unadorned by the subsidiary- 
porticos, its dingy, though not unpleasing wood 
''trim," and its pagoda-like cupola of two stages 
adorned with ogival slatted windows, and bearing 
aloft a gilded weather vane in the form of a comet, 
and yet above that a large gilded star. 

Newark of the period during which the college 
was closed, and for many years after, was a small 
and rather inactive village, strung for the better 
part of a mile along the highway leading southwest- 
ward to Baltimore, northeastward to Wilmington 
and Philadelphia, Main Street, a thoroughfare deej) 
adust all Summer, mired in mud all Winter, when 
not frozen into granite-like ruts, or mercifully cov- 
ered with the assoiling charity of snow. The 
campus, then, as now, was a deliciously green oasis, 
rich in noble trees, and especially distinguished by 
the double row of European lindens, leading up to 
the dignified front of Old College. A revolving 
turnstile, replaced in the early seventies by a double 
flight of substantial steps, gave entrance to the 
campus from Main Street. So long as the activities 
of Delaware College were suspended, ''The Ora- 
tory," as Old College was then called, served the 
community for many public purposes. If Signor 
Blitz, the famous prestidigitateur of two genera- 
tions ago, came to town, the Swiss Bellringers 
arrived, or a solemn lecturer brought enlightenment 
as to Siam or Bourioboulagha, the performance of 
the evening was given in the Oratory. Those were 
times of the simple life, and our good townsfolk 
were easily amused. Several rooms of Old College 

14 



were at one time occupied by a private school, and, 
in the late sixties, while the new Presbyterian 
Church was building, the congregation for many 
months worshipped in the Oratory, thus putting it 
to a use justified by its popular but probably oft- 
misinterpreted name. Political parties often held 
their meetings on the campus, and Professor E. D. 
Porter, Principal of Newark Academy, usually gave 
there an exhibition of fireworks in celebration of 
Independence Day. 

The bare monastic halls, and echoing stairways of 
Old College now and then stirred the curiosity of 
idle boys, and many were the conjectures as to the 
significance of the Latin inscriptions on the door 
of the Delta Phi Hall, and of the Greek initials upon 
that of the Athenaean Hall in the opposite wing of 
the building, while puzzled boyish eyes were vainly 
strained in an effort to discover the contents of the 
two halls through the tantalizingly small slits in 
their jealously uncommunicative doors. 

Newark slept with the sleeping College through 
the decade, 1860-70, a village of quiet ways and 
rather primitive standards, and then toward the 
end of that time heard with incredulity the rumor 
that Delaware College was to be revived. Early 
in 1869 the rumor had grown into certainty, for a 
new charter had been granted by the Delaware Leg- 
islature, and the Board of Trustees had been 
enlarged by like enactment. The hundredth anni- 
versary of Newark Academy, and the prospective 
resuscitation of the College were celebrated at a 
public "banquet" beneath the shade of the linden 
avenue in the Summer of 1869, a feast to which 
many townsfolk contributed solids and sweets, and 
at which a large part of the community sat down 
to rejoice together at the academic century done 
and at the new educational era about to begin. 
Scores of men and women then recalled the original 

15 



opening of the College in the Spring of 1834, and 
the village hummed with gossip reminiscent of per- 
sons and incidents connected with the life of the 
institution. 

Delaw^are College reopened its doors to students 
on Wednesday evening, September 14, 1870. That 
was hardly an auspicious time for such an under- 
taking, and the conditions surrounding the revived 
institution were not favorable to a quick and easy 
success. The College had an extremely small body 
of living alumni in 1870, for the whole number 
marticulated during its first twenty-five years, from 
1834 to 1859, was only 454, and of these only 126 
had been graduated. The College in 1870 had sent 
forth no graduating class for more than a decade, so 
that thus its academic traditions had been broken, 
for not a few of the alumni had found it necessary 
to send their sons to colleges elsewhere. There was 
no little sectarian jealousy felt toward the College 
because it had been somewhat under Presbyterian 
influence, and the notion seemed to have gone abroad 
that it was to continue under such influence. The 
local community, as the State at large, was still 
divided by the bitter memories of the Civil War. 
Some severe moralists also held that Delaware Col- 
lege could never prosper, because, like many another 
such institution, it had obtained part of its original 
funds through a lottery. To make the situation 
w^orse, there was current in the academic world of 
the day the notion that the weak colleges of the 
United States deserved to die, in order that those 
strong enough to offer the best advantages to stu- 
dents might be strengthened in endowment and in 
undergraduate numbers. This notion, probably the 
direct outcome of "evolution,'' as then understood 
and interpreted by many commentators of Darwin's 
"Origin of Species," at that time but eleven years 
old, was more or less seriously urged for years after 

16 



as a sound reason for permitting Delaware College 
to perish in her period of struggle and adversity. 

Delaware College might have slept far longer but 
for the legislation of Congress, fathered by Repre- 
sentative (afterward Senator) Justin Smith Mor- 
rill, of Vermont, and enacted in 1862, by the provi- 
sions of which each state received an area of public 
land in proportion to its representation in Congress, 
or the equivalent in land scrip, for the establishment 
of colleges for teaching agriculture, the mechanical 
arts and military science. Delaware was entitled, 
under this act, to 90,000 acres of land, and after the 
Board of Trustees had voted to make the institution 
a State College, and to deed to the State a half inter- 
est in its grounds and buildings, Delaware College 
was designated the beneficiary under the so-called 
''Morrill Act." By the provisions of the new 
charter the Colle2:e was to grant free of tuition 
charge scholarships to thirty students, ten for each 
county to be appointed by members of the Legis- 
lature. 

Delaware College at the time of resuscitation 
offered an entjmeerino^ couse of three years, an agri- 
cultural course of four years, and a classical course 
of four years. It also admitted a few students as 
''irregulars." In 1873 was graduated the first class 
of the revived institution, when three youths 
received the degree of Ph. B. In 1874 there were 
seven graduates, all with the degree of A. B. save 
one, who received the degree of Ph. B. 

William Henry Purnell, a graduate of Delaware 
College in the class of 1846, a lawyer by profession, 
long active in the public affairs of Maryland, and 
Colonel of the Purnell Legion, raised by him early 
in the period of the Civil War, was chosen President 
of the College at its resuscitation. President Pur- 
nell was professor of English literature and lan- 
guage, mental and moral and political science. For 

17 



a time he also taught classes in Latin. The other 
members of the Faculty were Edward D. Porter, 
professor of agriculture, mathematics and civil 
engineering; the Rev. William D. Mackey, a Pres- 
byterian minister, professor of ancient languages, 
who also taught some classes in mathematics ; C. P. 
Williams, professor of chemistry, an able and inter- 
esting man, who quit his post shortly to undertake 
commercial chemistry, and was succeeded by Doctor 
Theodore R. Wolf; Jules Macheret, professor of 
military tactics and of modern languages, and 
Henry Schoenherr, instructor in German. 

•Colonel Purnell, or Doctor Purnell, as he came 
to be called after he had dropped his military for 
his academic title, easily won and always kept the 
respect and regard of the students, tie was dig- 
nified in manners, but without any touch of pom- 
posity, and his courtesy was unfailing. His scholar- 
ship was certainly not that of the modern specialist, 
but he was a somewhat widely read lover of good 
letters, and a public speaker of more than common 
charm and force. Plis social outlook had been 
broadened by contact with men of weight in his 
own State and in the Nation, and he had been 
schooled in important public office. His inheritance 
of sympathetic social ease from his birth and 
upbringing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland 
enabled him to understand and to conciliate the stu- 
dents and the local community. The simple, friendly 
manners and delightfully sweet voice of Mrs. Pur- 
nell, also a native of the Eastern Shore, made her 
the President's able second in all social matters. 

Professor Porter was in some respects the most 
brilliant and versatile man of the Faculty. He had 
an agreeable smile, a fascinating speech, and a large 
reservoir of general information. This last the stu- 
dents soon learned to tap with skill and precision at 
critical moments in the classroom, and many a 

18 



student saved himself and his mates from embar- 
rassing questions directed to laying bare what they 
did not know of the lesson in hand by a well-put 
query tending to draw out copiously what Professor 
Porter did know upon some other subject. Pro- 
fessor Porter had practised civil engineering before 
he became Principal of Newark Academy. 

Professor Mackey, perhaps the best beloved of 
the Faculty, was a man of great simplicity and no 
pretence. His deeply earnest voice, his slightly lisp- 
ing utterance, his sincere and friendly eyes, his 
unsuspicious attitude, perhaps also his indifference 
to sartorial decoration, disarmed youth of its natural 
revolt from authority, and speedily gave him an 
assured place in the affections of the students, 
though his pleasant illusion as to the essential good- 
ness of his young friends was soon rudely shaken by 
their incorrigible love of mischief. Not the most 
mischievous youth of the whole student body, how- 
ever, harbored any but kind thoughts of Professor 
Macke}^. 

Professor Macheret, son of an officer who had 
served with distinction in the French army, proudly 
wore in his lapel the button of the Legion of Honor. 
A simpler, kinder man could not have been found 
than he, or perhaps one less suited to deal with 
American youth of the period. He was heartily 
liked, but persistently teased, so that many students 
profited little by his lessons in French, and less by 
his instruction in military science. Some who 
visited him, old and broken, in the ''home" at Wil- 
mington that gave him asylum during his later 
years, were shameful and repentant at the annoy- 
ances and humiliations to which they had subjected 
so good a man. 

Dr. Theodore R. Wolf, upon taking in the Fall 
of 1 87 1 the professorship of chemistry vacated by 
Professor Williams, was fresh from Heidelberg 

19 



University, whence he had brought the Ph. D. of 
that school, then regarded as the greatest of its kind 
in Europe. He was a handsome and distinguished 
young man, with a duelling scar across his fine brow, 
and a manner marked by native dignity. The stu- 
dents probably did not realize that this impressive, 
though essentially unpretentious person, was some 
years younger than the oldest of their own number, 
and not many years older than the youngest. He 
was the sole man of the Faculty with a university 
training abreast of the times. Dr. Wolf was thor- 
oughly imbued with the German scientific spirit and 
method of the period, and he did his best with a 
group of crude and raw boys to teach chemistry in 
accordance with the ideals he had caught from Bun- 
sen and the other great German masters of the 
science. Then and thereafter he did not greatly 
concern himself for the careless or indifferent stu- 
dent, but he took infinite pains with any man who 
showed a genuine interest in chemistry, and almost 
immediately he found a few men glad to return 
to College after graduation for the opportunity to 
specialize in his laboratory. It was darkly whis- 
pered among the students and throughout the com- 
munity that Dr. Wolf was that awful new thing, an 
evolutionist, that as like as not he believed almost 
any fellow's great-great-grandfather had been an 
anthropoid ape. He disappointed the censorious, 
however, by attending church, and making no 
attempt at Darwinian propaganda. 

Delaware College redivivus opened that Septem- 
ber evening with twenty-two students. During the 
first term the number grew to twenty-nine, and 
before the first class was graduated there were 
something over two score in attendance. Most of 
the students were from Delaware, but there were a 
few from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and four 
or five from widely scattered states. They ranged 

20 



in age from less than sixteen to twenty- four or five. 
Perhaps not a single student was really well pre- 
pared for the work to be done or could have entered 
any of the larger colleges without conditions. Some 
had entered almost by accident, as for example 
George Morgan, who having started with his father 
to enter Dickinson, where he had a scholarship, was 
diverted to Delaware College by an acquaintance 
whom he and his father met on the train coming 
North, and from whom they learned that Delaware 
College was about to open for students. The boys 
from Maryland came mainly through the influence 
of President Purnell; those from Pennsylvania 
were brought by the advice of Professor Mackey 
and Professor Williams. Some of the Marylanders 
lived in the house occupied by President Purnell, the 
agreeable old colonial building at the northwest cor- 
ner of Main Street and North College Avenue, then 
as now looking like a bit out of an English village. 
There were a few students from Wilmington, but all 
such lived at Newark from Monday to Saturday. 
Half a dozen students came from Newark or the 
neighborhood, and lived at home. 

Most of the students were lodged in Old College, 
which was at once dormitory, refectory and recita- 
tion hall. A motherly and efficient woman looked 
to the feeding of the students, and fed them uncom- 
monly well. Aside from the wholesome and abun- 
dant table all the appointments of Old College were 
simple even to crudity. There were no toilet con- 
veniences of any kind in the building, and students 
bathed where and when they could. Fortunately 
for personal sanitation, White Clay Creek was near 
at hand. There was no general heating system, so 
that the individual rooms had to be heated with 
stoves. There was no general lighting system, so 
that every student had to have a lamp of his own 
and a supply of coal oil, bought, borrowed or other- 

21 



wise acquired. The Oratory, used as assembly 
room for morning prayers and upon commence- 
ment occasions, was carpetless and unadorned 
except by the wreaths of evergreen and floral deco- 
rations annually put up by the students in honor of 
their literary society anniversaries held in com- 
mencement week. Bedrooms were ill ventilated, and 
in. Winter by turns unbearably hot and perilously 
cold, for the most part meagerly furnished, and 
almost the best of them after the first year's use 
shamefully shabby and worn. Most of the recita- 
tion rooms were uncarpeted, and Dr. Wolf's was so 
inadequately heated in Winter that men attended 
classes in their overcoats. In the hot weather of 
Summer and Autumn the bedrooms wxre like little 
infernos. Delaware College of that day was char- 
acterized by plain living and, let us hope, by high 
thinking. 

Students not having legislative scholarships paid 
in the earlier years after the resuscitation $60 a 
year for tuition, a charge later, when all students 
residents of Delaware were made free of tuition 
fees, imposed upon non-residents only. The College 
year w^as at first divided into three terms. For the 
Fall term the charge for room rent was $4, and for 
each of the items, fuel for Oratory and recitation 
rooms, janitor, use of library and incidentals, was 
$1. For the other terms, somewhat shorter than 
the first, the charges were slightly less, so that the 
yearly charge for tuition, lodging, and the other 
items named, was $79.80. There were small labora- 
tory fees for materials used. Board at the College 
refectory was for some years $3.50 a week, and 
rarely more at private tables in the village. Some 
students in the eighties and nineties of the last cen- 
tury rented small houses and provided their own 
meals. There were current somewhat fearsome 
rumors of life at these resorts, but perhaps such 

22 



rumors had a tinge of romance. For a good many 
years also the students themselves managed the 
refectory, and at times reduced the weekly cost of 
board somewhat below $3.50. When in the first 
decade of the present century Greek Letter frater- 
nities were organized a considerable number of the 
students lived at the fraternity houses, where they 
had both board and lodging. With the improve- 
ment of Old College three years ago, the serving of 
meals at the fraternity houses ceased, and most stu- 
dents dined at the "Commons," where board has 
usually been furnished at about $6 a week. Sim- 
plicity of living and moderate expenditure have 
always been characteristic of Delaware College, and 
even since the new, handsome, convenient and com- 
fortable dormitories were built, the rates for room 
rent have been kept low. 

Intercollegiate. sports were not widely popular in 
the early seventies of the last century, and at Dela- 
ware College systematic athletics were entirely 
unknown. The students played baseball on the 
campus to the east of the linden avenue, and met 
the town club in match games on a field in the lower 
part of the village. One student brought to College 
a bicycle of antique type, with wooden wheels of 
equal size, and rather crude steering gear. Upon 
this odd machine something like half the students 
learned to ride, and its ponderous sturdiness enabled 
it to withstand for many months such promiscuous 
use. As it seldom moved without at least two per- 
sons aboard, its endurance was a high tribute to 
the excellence of its material and the articulation of 
its parts. Luckily the Providence that takes care 
of the unwise saved us from grave accident. Foot- 
ball of an unidentifiable kind was played on the 
campus, and a horizontal bar was set up under a 
tree in the rear of the College that the students 
might learn to skin the cat, that the more adventur- 
ous might even essay the giant swing. 

23 



Most of the students had little or no pocket 
money, and few knew how to earn aught, though 
some, especially those studying agriculture, found 
employment at extremely moderate pay on the small 
farm of Professor Porter. Even the sons of well- 
to-do parents made no conspicuous display, and 
while some dressed carefully in the extreme of 
fashion apt to be affected by youth of college age, 
the military uniform, cadet gray, with a short jacket 
for privates and tailed coat for officers, helped to 
obliterate personal distinctions of attire. It is doubt- 
ful whether there were two genuine "evening suits" 
in the whole undergraduate body. 

Since the College opened with but one class, the 
Freshman, there were no Sophomores to give the 
members of the former class the discipline regarded 
by many collegians as salutary and even necessary. 
With no lower classmen to haze, the students of the 
first year naturally hazed one another, though the 
treatment was really not severe. A natural accom- 
paniment of this mild hazing was a vast deal of mis- 
cellaneous mischief. Indeed the little company that 
made up the undergraduate body of the early 
seventies probably contrived and executed more silly 
pranks than all the students of any decade since. 
Half a century ago American colleges still clung to 
the tradition that the prime duty of an undergraduate 
was to proclaim his manhood by flouting authority 
as embodied in the Faculty. Student government 
was then unknown, and student anarchy was the 
natural mode of expressing the undergraduate sense 
of independence. This tradition the student body 
of the revived Delaware College immediately inher- 
ited and soon put into active practice. Such acts 
of rebellion against constituted authority sprang 
from no ill will toward the Faculty. As a matter 
of fact no single member of that small body of 
earnest, faithful, underpaid and overworked men 

24 



was disliked, and most of them had the entire good 
will of the students, while some early won the genu- 
ine affection of all. On the whole the Faculty was 
disposed to take somewhat too seriously the patent 
follies of undergraduate youth, but this attitude of 
authority was natural since the long sleep of Dela- 
ware College was in part the result of deficient 
discipline culminating in a painful incident that long 
cast its baleful shadow over the institution. 

Did the dignity of history permit the author to 
present here anything like a complete record of stu- 
dent pranks since the year 1870, the intelligently 
critical reader would easily recognize a progression 
in this matter from what may be called the primitive 
simplicity exhibited by the works of those who gave 
themselves industriously to contrivance and inven- 
tion in the early days of the resuscitated college, to 
the high renaissance of the art as it was brilliantly 
practiced in the decade 1880-90, thence through its 
period of somewhat meretricious manifestations in 
the next decade and its almost entire disappearance 
within the last fifteen years. The "primitives," so 
to speak, of the early seventies, displayed what must 
be described as a naive and almost childish style, to 
be likened, let us say, to the ballad-making- period of 
English literature, or perhaps more aptly, to the 
cruder manifestations of early Italian painting, 
sometimes characterized, in the jargon of the 
modern art critics, as "sincere." Those early 
attempts, indeed, were at times hardly to be distin- 
guished from mere vulgar hazing. They were apt 
also to suggest the half timid attitude of defiance* 
towardconstituted authority sometimes shown by 
youths but a few years removed from freshly tearful 
memories of the paternal rod. As was to be 
expected, the art soon outgrew its cruder condition, 
and came to exhibit breadth of conception, boldness 

25 



of design, practiced technical ease, and at the same 
time rare perfection of detail. 

A classic example of the art in the period of its 
highest reach, and one for years after somewhat 
feebly imitated in the days of the decadence, was a 
famous night attack upon the grapery of the late 
Frederick A. Curtis at The Lindens. This interest- 
ing product of creative genius and technical intelli- 
gence, discussed with the utmost critical acumen at 
a somewhat recent accidental meeting of a vener- 
able judge of this commonwealth, a newly elected 
Senator of the United States, a former member of 
Congress, and the present humble chronicler, with 
its dramatic incidents, its fine tragi-comic touches. 
its convincing realism, and its wealth of decorative 
detail, deserves, as a distinguished example of a lost 
art, permanent and somewhat extended record. 
Such readers as hold matters of this sort too trivial 
to deserve a place in the grave history of our beloved 
Alma Mater are hereby advised to skip the imme- 
diately succeeding paragraphs of this narrative. 

It was a crisp September evening in the year 
1 88 — , when an innocent young man was invited by 
three or four hardened sinners to share in a raid 
upon the grapery at The Lindens. He accepted the 
invitation, and soon the whole company, provided 
with pillow cases, were silently plundering the vines, 
when a young member of the family at The Lindens, 
who had been warned by the conspirators of the 
intended attack, fired a shot-gun, not too accurately 
aimed, in the direction of the grapery. Instantly one 
of those in the know threw up his hands and fell to 
the ground with a groan. As he did so he managed 
to empty a bottle of red ink over his clothing in the 
region of the heart, and his comrades rushed to his 
aid. Taking him by head and heels they hastened 
toward the College, and having exhibited to the only 
man not in the secret the streaming red evidence of 

26 



the wound, they ordered him to run for a doctor. 
The real victim of the trick well out of sight on his 
errand, the supposed victim of the shot-gun 
hastened to his room and to bed. A doctor, called 
from bed by the frightened messenger, dressed in 
haste and came up to the College, his mind filled with 
memories of an earlier and fatal affair in the history 
of the institution. He was shown to the room of the 
supposedly injured man, while the deceived one 
eagerly awaited the official verdict. At the end of 
five minutes a very angry doctor was descending the 
high steps of Old College, and the victim of the 
adventure was creeping bedward in chagrin. The 
tale of this affair was known to the whole College, 
as every one supposed, and by tradition to all suc- 
ceeding classes, but industrious advertisement did 
not prevent the repetition of the trick at intervals 
for years after, and in at least one instance the 
victim was a Junior. 

Mere imitation is characteristic of decadent 
periods in all the fine arts, and hence the frequent 
repetition of the chef-d'oeuvre here described, with 
feeble attempts at variation and other marks of lan- 
guishing invention. Even in the last decade of the 
nineteenth century and the first few years of the 
twentieth, there were attempts to revive the lost art 
so crudely but sincerely begun in the early seventies, 
so brilliantly flourishing in the middle eighties. Con- 
noisseurs could not withhold critical praise from the 
elaborate incident of the ''merry-go-round," trans- 
ferred with immense labor at midnight to the campus 
beneath the very nose of the sleepy proprietor, and 
kept revolving for many hours by those who had 
conceived and executed the undertaking. There was 
also an undeniable flavor of high art in the scene 
presented by the campus one morning when it was 
transformed into the aspect of a cemetery by a host 
of tombstones borrowed from a local marble yard, 

27 



and appropriately inscribed with the names and vir- 
tues of Faculty members. These examples, how- 
ever, were merely sporadic; they did not create a 
new school of the declining art. 

A competent witness, who, without immodesty, 
may say, "Magna pars fui," hereby testifies that in 
his day college pranks, however silly, were in the 
main free from malice or evil intent, though then, as 
almost always in a considerable body of very young 
men released from the restraints of home, there 
w^ere undeniably vicious doings. Just why a youth 
highly content with his pastors and masters, inter- 
ested in his studies, and loyal to his Alma Mater, 
should sit up of nights contriving or executing 
absurd pranks in defiance of discipline, and likely 
to annoy if not to embarrass authority, it would be 
hard to say. Perhaps the adolescent period, when 
youth is suspected by some psychologists of being 
rather less than sane, w^as unnaturally prolonged 
during the first half of the present period of Dela- 
ware College redivivus. Perhaps also such ebulli- 
tions of animal spirits saved some youths from even 
graver errors of conduct. Certainly there came a 
time in the latter half of the period covered by this 
narrative when, after the student body had in some 
measure put away childish things, a sound student 
sentiment lent vigorous aid to the Faculty in sup- 
pressing vicious manifestations of a far more dan- 
gerous sort. Furthermore, after the earlier severi- 
ties of Faculty government had been greatly relaxed, 
there were instances of concerted student conduct 
that betrayed unwholesome features of crowd 
psychology and neurotic symptoms of anarchic 
character, due perhaps to the general unrest of the 
period near and after the close of the World War. 

Every well-ordered man of mature years who 
looks back over his undergraduate career must won- 
der a little at parts of his own and his comrades' 

28 



conduct, if he does not think with contrition and per- 
haps with shame of some things in which he had a 
share or against which he lacked the moral energy 
to protest. Perhaps every student body must be 
entrusted with rather more liberty of self-govern- 
ment than it has proved itself fully fit to exercise, 
in order that it may gradually develop such complete 
fitness. Self-government is a little like swimming, 
better learned by practice than by theory. If, how- 
ever, a student body cannot develop a true sense of 
loyalty, not merely to its present self, but to its 
future self, for it is an indefinitely continuous entity, 
it must submit to a curtailment of liberty. In a col- 
lege, as in the civic associations of older men, the 
safety of the state must be the supreme law. A 
college exists certainly not for the Faculty, and just 
as little for the Trustees. Nor does it exist solely 
for the student body in being at any particular time. 
It is the plain duty of Trustees and Faculty to 
administer the college for the benefit of its students, 
but they constitute a body not only in esse, but also 
in posse, and the student of any particular time is 
a traitor to his Alma Mater if he lend his example, 
council or influence of whatever sort to acts that 
may tend to transmit the institution to the student 
body of the future a less effective instrument of edu- 
cation than it might have been. For the academic 
traitor there should be little mercy among his 
fellows. 

As a matter of fact the disciplinary regulations of 
the '70's were antiquated, and as such hardly work- 
able. There was a law as to "bounds" which nobody 
respected, and there were periodic Faculty visita- 
tions at the dormitory that nourished the defiant 
spirit of mischief, and seldom resulted in the detec- 
tion of evildoers. One college regulation savoring 
of monastic severity required attendance upon 
prayers and a recitation before breakfast, at half- 

29 



past six, in Spring, Summer and early Autumn, and 
a quarter of seven in Winter. This custom, appar- 
ently inherited from that ancient monastic rule of 
breakfastless early mass, was soon given up, but 
while it lasted it was enforced with undue rigor. For 
example, students living a mile or more in the 
country were not excused from attendance upon 
these early exercises, so that some such had to get 
up long before sunrise in Winter, and at early dawn 
in Spring and Summer, perhaps attend to the neces- 
sary "chores" at home, and walk or drive to the 
college in order to be in time for "compulsory 
chapel." Students living in the dormitory often 
arrived at prayers unwashed and hardly half 
dressed, and perhaps nobody arrived in a truly 
prayerful mood. Nor was the service of a kind to 
inspire piety in ribald young minds, for it consisted 
of a chapter from the Bible perfunctorily read, the 
same chapter many times repeated in the course of a 
term, and a prayer, ex tempore or selected from the 
Episcopal prayer book. If any student was truly 
edified by this dismal performance, he must have 
been a shining example of early piety. 

The spirit of mischief was especially active in 
early days during the military exercises as conducted 
by the gentle and lovable Professor Macheret. Stu- 
dent-government would probably have helped to 
make the military instruction less of a farce than it 
v;as with many of the cadets, for there were earnest 
students, heartily respected by their fellows, who 
could have enforced a more effective discipline than 
the instructor was ever able to maintain. Most of 
the students did learn the manual at arms, and the 
cadet corps came after a time to march in creditable 
fashion, but mischief of some sort was seldom 
absent from the exercises. At inspection the same 
carefully cleaned rifle would be passed down the line 
behind the backs of the corps and inspected over and 

30 



over again. One night all the rifles were stolen from 
the armory and hidden in a neighboring barn, so that 
the corps had to drill without weapons until the rifles 
were recovered. Few took part in the military exer- 
cises who could find any possible excuse for exemp- 
tion. 

In spite of student pranks, and in spite of an over- 
worked Faculty, there was much earnest and 
rewarding study even in the early seventies, and 
perhaps a careful examination of the records would 
show that the men of that time have proved more 
creditable to their Alma Mater than might have been 
expected from the conditions of the period. Some 
of those who survive to this day, men entering the 
shadov/s of old age, will testify loyally to the inspira- 
tion caught from the Faculty, and to the pleasure 
and profit drawn from association with their fel- 
lows. There were many readers among the men of 
that first little group, and while the College library 
hardly existed, some men found in the libraries of 
the two literary societies the first considerable col- 
lection of books "proper to literature" that they had 
ever been privileged to use at will. 

Those literary societies, the Athenaean and the 
Delta Phi, held a place of importance in the College 
hard to over-estimate and hardly to be understood 
by the students of to-day. As soon as the College 
was set going in the Autumn of 1870, the literary 
societies were revived. A member of the Faculty, 
who had been a Delta Phi in the days before the 
coma, invited a suitable number of men to join that 
society, and delivered to the members the tradition 
of the organization, while the Athenaean Society 
was also reconstituted by the aid of a former mem- 
ber. The societies were secret, though their secrets 
were utterly harmless. The organizations were rivals, 
not unfriendly, but traditional and earnest. Their 
exercises were literary and forensic, and many a 

31 



man learned in one or the other far more of parlia- 
mentary law, of effective public speaking, and of 
skill in written self-expression than he learned from 
the formal requirements of his college course. 
Although the society libraries were not large, per- 
haps less than 1500 volumes each, they were mainly 
well selected, and men with a taste for good letters 
found in these libraries many of the books of which 
their text book in literature critically treated. While 
intimate friends belonging to different societies jeal- 
ously kept the secrets of their organizations, they 
cheerfully exchanged books, sd that for the purposes 
of literary culture the two libraries were essentially 
one, and thus in some measure they made up for the 
poverty of the College library. Not a few students 
of the early seventies would probably testify that 
they read and deeply enjoyed more masterpieces 
during their college course than they have read and 
assimilated in any period of like length since. 

Most members of the literary societies were not 
only thoroughly loyal to the interests of the organi- 
zations, but cheerfully ready to make sacrifices in 
order to attend the meetings. Indeed, to many men 
those meetings were a source of the utmost pleasure. 
Both societies at first met on Saturday morning, and 
for some years they found no trouble in being sure 
of a quorum. Some students living at Wilmington 
rarely missed a meeting for the sake of a Friday 
night at home, and students living in the country 
trudged in faithfully on Saturday morning to attend 
the meetings of their society. The anniversary 
exercises of the societies were especially fostered by 
the Faculty, and were quite as popular and crowded 
as the graduating exercises at commencement. 
Harder work in college, more amusements, perhaps 
a more practical spirit, finally brought about the fad- 
ing out of the societies after years of languishing. 
Perhaps, as the College grows in numbers, there 

32 



will be found groups of students sufficiently inter- 
ested in the things for which the societies stood to 
justify their revival, and the entrance of the College 
on its second half century since the resuscitation 
may possible prove a fitting time to attempt such a 
revival. There is probably no reason why the exer- 
cises of the societies should not be modified to fit 
the needs of the newer time, and possibly the not dis- 
tant future may see rise upon the campus or the 
green two appropriate buildings, one for the 
Athenaean Society and one for the Delta Phi. 

Literature, and what we call rather indefinitely 
^^intellectual interests," were not dead or even sleep- 
ing at Delaware College when the literature societies 
gradually faded out of undergraduate life. The 
Greek Letter Fraternities, the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, systematic athletics, a technical 
society in connection with the engineering depart- 
ment, the growth of the general library, and various 
student activities came to supply some of the things 
that the literary societies had afforded. Some part 
of the spontaneous intellectual activity of the student 
body found expression in undergraduate publica- 
tions. The earliest of these, short-lived, but genu- 
inely creditable in view of the extremely small 
student body from which it came, was the Delaware 
College Advance, started in 1874 as a monthly publi- 
cation under the editorship of George Morgan 
( 1875 ) , who has been all his life an active journalist, 
and is now nearing the close of his forty-fifth year 
in the profession, and his thirty-third on the staff 
of the Philadelphia Record. The Delaware College 
Advance was short-lived, but like its predecessor. 
Our Sunbeam, of the period before the coma, was 
a more than commonly well written student publica- 
tion. It attracted to its columns the best work that 
those students interested in literature and journalism 
could do, and compared favorably with most of its 

33 



academic exchanges. Ten years later came the Del- 
ard'are College Review, which still vigorously sur- 
viving in its thirty-sixth year, is in all respects a 
credit to the student body. The ribald rejoiced, the 
grave deplored or feigned such emotion, and per- 
haps some of the judicious grieved, though hardly 
as those without hope, when Student Opinion 
breathed its first and last in the Spring of 1918. 

The first Junior Annual, The Aurora, by the 
class of 1899, appeared in 1898. Next came The 
Derelict, in 1899, issued by the Class of 1900. 
Until 1918 the publication was issued as a biennial 
by the ''even-number" classes. The class of 1908, 
which issued the publication in 1907, changed 
the title to The Blue Hen, which title has since been 
used, and in 1918 the class of 1919 broke precedent 
and published The Blue Hen as an "odd-number" 
issue. The precedent seems likely to prevail, so 
that The Blue Hen may now be regarded as a defi- 
nitely established Junior annual. 

The first annual of the Women's College appeared 
as The Chronicle of ipi8, issued by the graduating 
class of that year. Even unprejudiced neutrals cor- 
dially recognized this piece of academic journalism 
as above the average of such publications, distin- 
guished for an unmistakable feminine flavor, for a 
happy lightness of touch, a more than common 
degree of agreeably sub-acid humor, and for distin- 
guished quality in composition, illustration, typog- 
raphy and binding. 

The agricultural students began issuing some 
years ago The Delazvare Farmer, concerned with 
matters of interest to farmers and students of farm- 
ing in its various aspects. This publication, issued 
monthly during the academic year, is one of several 
activities that mark the increased and increasing 
importance of the agricultural courses. 

34 



Varying fortunes have marked the career of The 
Alumni News, a pubHcation issued at first monthly, 
later quarterly. Egmont Horn (1910) was for 
some years its efficient editor, and with the occa- 
sional aid of an advisory council he produced a gen- 
uinely interesting and valuable current record of 
events concerned with the alumni, together with 
history, reminiscence and other matters germane 
to the College. When Mr. Horn's business required 
his retirement from the editorship, Harlow H. Cur- 
tis undertook the w^ork, and issued one highly credit- 
able number, but his untimely death cut short his 
editorial career. His brother, Louis L. Curtis 
( 1884), largely prepared the next issue, but felt that 
he could not give his time to an unfamiliar task, and 
as no one was at hand to continue the work of issu- 
ing a monthly publication. Professor George E. But- 
ton (1904), of the English Department, although 
sorely pressed by his professional work, continued 
The Alumni News for some time as a small quar- 
terly, until our entrance into the World War com- 
pelled the discontinuance of the publication. It is 
just to credit Everett C. Johnson (1899), editor of 
the Newark Post, with his generous aid to The 
Alumni News. Indeed, only the firm refusal of the 
Alumni to accept all that he offered prevented Mr. 
Johnson from taking upon himself a large part of 
the expense involved in the monthly issue. The 
Alumni Nezvs will shortly resume publication. 

Perhaps, after all, the most fruitful of the unoffi- 
cial influences in college life are found in the free 
comradeship of young men, and the untrammeled 
exchange of opinions. Such opinions, often crude, 
and perhaps seldom founded upon safely broad gen- 
eralization and close reasoning from a sufficient 
acquaintance with facts, are not however merely 
perverse intellectual manifestations, but for the most 
part honest attempts at genuine self-expression, and 

35 



sometimes exciting adventures into the unchartered 
mysteries of existence. Those long hours of free 
discussion upon Hterature, politics, art, history, and 
that bold philosophising about ''things in general," 
so beloved of youth as yet undaunted by the sobering 
effects of long personal experience, and direct con- 
tact with practical life, are what many a man looks 
back upon with delight as among the most palatable, 
and perhaps not the least nourishing provender 
yielded by his four years at College. If the teaching 
of the classroom be sympathetic and stimulating 
rather than impersonally dry or magisterially 
authoritative, under-graduate association is apt also 
to be vastly enriched and deepened through what 
the student hears ex cathedra. A College, after 
all, is not solely an educational mill grinding mer- 
cilessly, nor can its model be the workshop organized 
and keyed according to the modern industrial watch- 
word ''efficiency." A College is also a nursery of 
souls. 



36 



Struggle 



CHAPTER 11. 

Struggle 

As THE College showed small growth in its 
first two years after the resuscitation, Dr. 
' Purnell, an earnest believer in co-education, 
urged that women be admitted to its privileges. He 
met with much opposition in this matter, but in 1872 
he carried his point. In that year six young women 
entered Delaware College, and the curriculum was 
somewhat modified to suit their needs, though not 
in the direction of domestic science. Most of them 
were from Newark, though later Wilmington and 
other parts of the State sent their quota. Although 
co-education was not liked by most of the male un- 
dergraduates, their relations with the ''co-eds" were 
friendly and even gallant. Indeed, the attitude of 
the young men toward the girls with whom they 
were associated in the class room did credit to both 
themselves and the girls. A few of the young men 
even went so far in their devotion to individual co- 
eds as to continue the relations formed during 
undergraduate days until they eventuated in the 
life-partnership of marriage. The decorative value 
of the co-eds was undeniable, and they easily carried 
off the scholastic honors. In spite of all this, how- 
ever, co-education never became popular or firmly 
established at Delaware College, and when Dr. 
Purnell, because of somewhat prolonged friction 



with a part of the Board of Trustees, retired from 
the Presidency in 1885, the system received its 
deathblow. Dr. Purnell, in retiring from the Presi- 
dency, retained his membership in the Board, and 
although when he returned to Delaware College 
about twenty years later as an instructor he was still 
a firm believer in co-education, he did not live to see 
the establishment of the Women's College, and his 
plan of more than thirty years earlier, realized in 
effect and made permanent under a modified form. 

A favorite argument against co-education had 
been that the system would tend to drive away the 
men or at least to keep them away, so that in time 
Delaware College would be an institution for women 
only. As a matter of fact the experiment of a dozen 
years hardly proved this contention. It is true that 
with the entrance of women in 1872 the number of 
men fell to seventeen whereas the number in 1871 
had been twenty-seven. In the year 1873-4, how- 
ever, there were thirty-one men to fourteen women, 
and in the year 1874-5 there were thirty- four men 
to twenty women, while in 1883-4 there were forty- 
one men to seventeen women. 

The alarming decadence of the College came 
after Dr. Purnell and the women had gone. He was 
succeeded in the Presidency in 1885 by the Rev. 
John H. Caldwell, D. D., a Methodist minister of 
excellent reputation, chosen partly perhaps because 
of the hope that he might draw to the College the 
Methodist youth of the State. Dr. Purnell was a 
Presbyterian elder. Professor Mackey was a Pres- 
byterian minister. Professor Porter was a Presby- 
terian elder, so that there was some seeming ground 
for sectarian jealousy, though there was no attempt 
upon the part of authorities of Delaware College at 
anything resembling sectarian propaganda. Un- 
luckily for Dr. Caldwell's success in ofifice he was 
speedily involved in unpleasant friction with several 

40 



members of his Faculty. Meanwhile, in spite of his 
efforts to build up the College it did not grow. 
Growth, indeed, was almost impossible when it was 
notorious that the President and his Faculty were 
at odds, and this unhappy condition was long drawn 
out. In March, 1887, the President brought the 
matter officially to the attention of the Trustees. 
The members of the Faculty with whom Dr. Cald- 
well was especially in disagreement also presented to 
the Board a statement of their case. The Board in 
answer to this double appeal adopted a futile resolu- 
tion acquitting both sides to the quarrel of inten- 
tional wrong doing, declaring that the friction arose 
from inattention to the rules and by-laws of the 
College, and urging harmony upon all concerned. 
This was a cry of peace where there could be no 
peace, and in June of the same year the Board re- 
quested and Dr. Caldwell offered his resignation. 
Three weeks later, howxver, the Board reconsidered 
its action and postponed consideration of the resig- 
nation until the next Spring. March 27th the Presi- 
dent's resignation was accepted after he had in- 
formed the Board that he fully intended to give up 
his post at the end of the College year in order to 
accept a pastoral appointment. 

The long agony of this wretched period did the 
College great harm, won it some enemies, and de- 
layed the time when the people of the State should 
realize its importance in the educational system of 
Delaware. Worst of all, perhaps, the original 
cause of friction was so trivial as to seem almost 
too ridiculous for public avowal. Dr. Caldwell, 
sixty-eight years of age when he came to the Presi- 
dency, was a minister of the old school, conscien- 
tiously devoted to a strict interpretation of the 
severe traditional "discipline" of his church. His 
fellows of the Faculty, mostly much younger men, 
had no sympathy with his attitude toward many 

41 



things, and they fell into violent disagreement with 
him when he vetoed the permission they had voted 
for the holding of a dance in the "Oratory," the 
only suitable hall for the purpose. From the time of 
this trivial incident friction, the more irritating be- 
cause of irresponsible tattle, increased until Dr. 
Caldwell came to feel that every man's hand was 
against him. At the same time the members of the 
Faculty complained of him as unnecessarily auto- 
cratic in the exercise of authority, and thus the irre- 
pressible conflict went on until peace came with Dr. 
Caldwell's departure. 

When Dr. Caldwell entered upon his Presidency 
there were thirty-three men and eight women at- 
tending College, the eight women being the last of 
their sex to appear on the student roster. When he 
retired from the Presidency in March, 1888, there 
were but sixteen students left in College and the old 
cry that the smaller Colleges should be permitted to 
die a natural death was heard again. The policy 
that made possible this long academic friction thus 
came near to proving a fatal error. 



The Women's College: of Delaware 

Agitation for the restoration of the co-educational 
system at Delaware slept and awoke from time to 
time after the system had been abandoned in 1885, 
and there was perhaps never any considerable period 
thereafter when some members of the Board of 
Trustees, a few of the Faculty, and a number of 
the Alumni were not in favor of re-opening the doors 
to women. The movement, however, gathered no 
great strength, though nobody effectively met the 
argument that a State which provided the higher 
education free of charge for its young men should 
do the like for its young women. At length the As- 

42 



sociated Women's Clubs of Delaware, which organi- 
zation included some of the most intelligently active 
and public-spirited women in the State, began to 
urge the matter upon public attention. Co-education 
still had some friends, but eventually the plan of a 
College for women to be situated at Newark, in affil- 
iation with Delaware College was adopted as avoid- 
ing whatever might be thought objectionable in co- 
education, and as obviously more economical of 
means and energy than a College for women to be 
established elsewhere in the State and unconnected 
with Delaware College. 

A tract of 19 acres, fronting South College Ave- 
nue about half a mile south of Old College was ac- 
cordingly purchased June 9th, 19 13, as the site of 
the Women's College of Delaware. Other sites, sev- 
eral of them far more beautiful, were offered and 
considered, specifically an area of high ground south 
of the Baltimore 'Tike" or Telegraph Road as it is 
sometimes called, and about a third of a mile west 
of the village limits, and, as another, part of the 
Hossinger farm, a fine area of high level land and 
sloping hillside, half a mile northwest of Old College 
and near the highway along the valley of the White 
Clay Creek, popularly known as the ''Creek Road." 
Convenience with reference to Old College, and the 
possibility of making the site of the Women's Col- 
lege continuous with the campus were some of the 
elements that determined the choice finally made. 
The purchase of a considerable strip of land on both 
sides of Main Street, part of it opposite and the re- 
mainder east of Old College, and of another area 
southward between this purchase and the site of the 
Women's College, gave the two Colleges, with the 
State Farm, an area of 300 acres. The land oc- 
cupied by Old College retains its familiar name of 
''The Campus" while the land south of Main Street 
onward to the site of the Women's College, received 

43 



the name of '^The Green." In 191 7 the Trustees of 
the College purchased from Walter C. Curtis, as a 
residence for the President, the Minot Curtis Home- 
stead facing South College Avenue from the west, 
along with about three and a half acres of ground. 
This house, built by the late Dr. N. H. Clark shortly 
after the Civil War, is a large, dignified, and sub- 
stantial wooden building set at the crest of a gentle 
rise, and overlooking an ample lawn, enriched with 
well-selected trees grown through more than half a 
century to mature beauty. The President's house 
stands somewhat less than half the distance from 
Old College to the site of the Women's College. 

Work on the site of the Women's College was 
begun formally in the presence of a warmly sympa- 
thetic gathering, June i6th, 1913, when the turf 
was turned with fitting ceremonies in token of pos- 
session. Actual building operations were delayed 
until the first week of January, 1914. Science Hall 
and Residence Hall, the buildings provided for in 
the legislative appropriation of $125,000 were fin- 
ished and ready for occupancy in the early Fall of 
that year. 

Perhaps nothing did so much to hasten the found- 
ing of the Women's College of Delaware as the 
awakening of women all over the State to the need 
of such an institution, and for that awakening the 
Federation of Women's Clubs was largely respon- 
sible. Mrs. Alfred D. Warner of Wilmington, her- 
self a member of the commission created by the 
Legislature for the purchase of a site and the erec- 
tion of the first buildings of the Women's College, 
and gratefully acknowledged by the institution as 
one of its foremost and most efficient friends, re- 
called in her address at the dedicatory ceremonies 
that Dr. Harter had suggested four years before in 
an address at the New Century Club of Wilmington, 
the establishment of a College for women in affilia- 

44 



tion with Delaware College. Miss Mather, President 
of the Delaware Association of College Women, 
proposed that the women of the State begin to work 
for the establishment of such a College. The Feder- 
ated Women's Clubs at once joined in the work, and 
the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the 
Delaware Suffrage Association, the State Board of 
Education, and the State Grange lent aid to the 
movement. Governor Charles R. Miller publicly 
declared at Dover his hope that before the end of his 
administration Delaware would provide a College 
for its young women. There was a time when the 
legislation providing for the establishment of the 
College seemed in danger, but strong friends rallied 
to the aid of the unborn institution, a Commission to 
purchase land and erect buildings was created, and 
the appropriation provided. Women and organiza- 
tions of women all over the State made gifts to Col- 
lege when its buildings were approaching comple- 
tion, and Residence Hall w^as mainly furnished by 
such gifts. 

There had been prophecies that whatever struc- 
tures were erected upon the site of the Women's Col- 
lege of Delaware would certainly at first, and per- 
haps for some years, exhibit to the disappointed 
friends of the undertaking merely hollow sounding 
emptiness, because young women of Delaware who 
wished a collegiate education would go elsewhere. 
In spite of such prophecies, before the infant institu- 
tion even opened its doors to students in September, 
1 9 14, there w^as abundant evidence of interest in the 
new College and nearly one hundred young women 
applied for admission. Of these sixty-one were ac- 
cepted as sufficiently well prepared to undertake the 
w^ork, forty-eight in the regular courses and thirteen 
as special students. In 191 5-16 the College num- 
bered forty-three Sophomores, thirty-three Fresh- 
men, and tw^elve special students, a total of eighty- 

45 



nine, and in the year 1916-17, the total enrollment 
was no. The College year 1919-20 opened with a 
Freshman class of eighty-eight and a total enroll- 
ment of 132. The first graduating class, that of 
1 91 8, nmnbered thirty. The roster for the year 
1 91 8- 19 numbered eighty-six and the graduating 
class of that year numbered sixteen, while that of 
1920 will number approximately twenty-seven. 

The Women's College offered at opening three 
four-year courses, Arts and Science, Education, and 
Home Economics, and also a two-year course in 
Home Economics. Tuition was made free to all 
students from Delaware. The course in Education 
is especially intended to prepare young women to 
become teachers in the schools of Delaware, public 
and private. This course was thoroughly recast in 
1919 to make it more effective for its purpose. It is 
in some sense supplemented by the Delaware College 
Summer School, instituted in the Summer of 191 5, 
and conducted at the Women's College. By the 
Summer of 191 7 this school had grown to a total of 
281 persons, many of them from neighboring re- 
gions on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Sum- 
mer School of 1 918 numbered 200, that of 191 9, 
240. In the Summer of 1918 the Teachers' Insti- 
tute of Delaware met at Delaware College, imme- 
diately after the close of the Summer School, with 
an attendance of about 400 persons. 

Especially significant was the Delaware College 
Summer School of 1919, for its session opened after 
the new Public School Code for the State had been 
put into effect, and about the same time the gift of 
$2,000,000 by Pierre S. du Pont, to be spent in four 
years for improved school buildings, in Delaware, 
had been announced, with all its momentous implica- 
tions for the future of education throughout the 
State, while the Summer School itself in that year 
was organized and conducted upon a new and highly 

46 



interesting plan. Well-known popular lecturers, and 
several specialists in various branches of education 
took part in the work of the School. At the same 
time the Service Citizens' Association lent aid to the 
School, and established a publicity bureau at 
Delaware College to keep the press of the State fully 
informed as to undertakings for betterment in edu- 
cation, sanitation and other essentials of the life of 
the people. Americanization, to promote which the 
State had appropriated $15,000, was made a special 
subject of study at the Summer School. 

In the Home Economics courses the Women's Col- 
lege offers practical instructions in a great variety 
of domestic subjects, which are included, as is fitting 
for such a school in a State having an important 
agricultural interest, management, dairying, stock 
raising, and many related subjects. The tasteful 
furnishing of the buildings of the Women's College 
has an important relation to the courses in Home 
Economics, as embodying powerful, though silent 
instruction by example. 

An important recent development tending to 
closer relations between the Delaware College and 
the whole system of education in this State is the 
offer by unnamed ^'friends of education" of sixty 
scholarships in the Women's College, carrying an- 
nually $125 each for four years, and especially in- 
tended for young women who wish to teach in the 
public schools of Delaware. This gift was announced 
early in June, 191 9, and at commencement a few days 
later was the announcement of a gift of $7,500 for 
the year 1919-20, to be increased to $9,250 for the 
year 1920-21, to enlarge the teaching force at the 
Women's College in view of the prospective devel- 
opment of the teachers' training department. These 
gifts accentuate the need of some such benefaction 
to enable Delaware College to offer special opportu- 

47 



nities to young men expecting to teach in the pubHc 
schools. 

In 191 7 a further legislative appropriation of 
$125,000 was granted to provide dormitories for the 
Women's College, and the first unit of a large and 
beautiful structure designed by the official supervis- 
ing architects of Delaware College was begun in 
that year. This unit has been named Sussex Hall, 
in honor of Delaware's largest and most southern 
County. The other two units will be named respect- 
ively New Castle Hall and Kent Hall, for the north- 
ern and middle counties of the State. Sussex Hall, 
though not quite finished, was opened for occupancy 
December i6th, 191 8. 

Miss Winifred J. Robinson, who won the degree 
of B. S. at Michigan University, that of M. A. at the 
Michigan Normal School, and at Columbia Univer- 
sity, and that of Ph. D., at the last named and who 
had been for some years a member of the Vassar 
Faculty, was called to the Head of the Women's Col- 
lege as Dean shortly before it opened its doors to 
students. The teaching force of the Women's Col- 
lege is made up in part of members from the Faculty 
of Delaware College, in part of other professors 
and instructors in branches especially adapted to the 
needs of women. The Dean of the Women's College 
is ex-officio a member of the Board of Trustees of 
Delaware College, as is the President of the latter, 
and the Board is the finally responsible governing 
body of both Colleges. A committee of the Board of 
Trustees has special responsibility for the affairs of 
the Women's College, and an Advisory Council of 
five women assists the committee in its task. The 
Act of Legislature providing for the establishment 
of the Women's College especially stipulates that its 
property shall not vest in the Trustees of Delaware 
College, nor may the funds of either College be used 
for the purposes of the other. 

48 



Dean Robinson furnishes the following as her 
conception of the field of the Women's College, and 
its peculiar advantages for students : *'It has taken 
fifty years of development of higher education for 
women to demonstrate that they are capable of 
mastering the same fundamental courses in mathe- 
matics, in chemistry, or in philosophy that their 
brothers are pursuing in College. The curriculum 
for men has been developed from what was origi- 
nally intended to train for the ministry to one which 
will prepare for the profession of medicine, law, 
diplomacy, or other careers. It is comparatively a 
recent thing that the higher education for young 
women has been considered as a thing which should 
be developed with reference to their future respon- 
sibilities. The supervision of the home with the care 
of children is now regarded as a profession. The 
work in our various social settlements and other 
philanthropies is a definite calling for which careful 
preparation must be made. The Americanization 
of the foreign-born in our schools is a problem for 
thoughtful preparation on the part of students who 
would teach. The civic responsibilities as to our 
industrial workers may not be undertaken without 
study of the great principles of economics. 

''The relation of affiliation with Delaware College 
makes it possible to have a larger Faculty than 
could be maintained by an independent College of the 
same size. It also affords opportunity for broader 
social experience than may be found in a women's 
college which is not so associated. 

''Because of its freedom from traditions, its small 
size, and the independence which comes from State 
control, the Women's College of Delaware is ad- 
mirably adapted to be an educational laboratory 
where great plans may be first put into operation 
and where a group of women may be educated for 
service which shall result in good homes, good 

49 



schools, good social and political conditions, and in 
communities that are characterized by a willingness 
to meet new problems with courage and good judg- 
ment/' 



The MiddIvE Period 

Dr. Lewis P. Bush, of the Board of Trustees, was 
made acting President of the College after Dr. Cald- 
well's resignation and until the opening of the Col- 
lege year 1888-89, when Dr. Albert N. Raub, Prin- 
cipal of Newark Academy, widely known as a writer 
of school textbooks and recognized as a conspicu- 
ously able school administrator, was called to the 
Presidency. About the time Dr. Raub came to the 
Presidency larger Federal aid was granted the insti- 
tutions already profiting by the so-called Morrill 
legislation. In 1888 the Delaware College Agricul- 
tural Experiment Station was established in connec- 
tion with the College, and near the same time, by the 
Hatch Bill of 1887 and the new Morrill bill of 1890, 
the income of College and the Station was increased 
by $36,000 a year, of which amount $15,000 an- 
nually went to the support of the Station. An army 
officer was now detailed to attend to military in- 
struction, and he was also able to relieve somewhat 
the over-laden mathematical department. The 
agricultural courses were strengthened about this 
time, and these courses, which had for a time at- 
tracted few or no students, began to make appeal 
to the youth of the State, although it was a good 
many years before the number of students in agri- 
culture was considerable. Fortunately for the Col- 
lege its professor of chemistry was early made ex 
officio State Chemist, an office sufficiently well paid 
to justify a man of Dr. Wolf's ability and profes- 
sional distinction in continuing his connection with 
the institution. 

50 



In view of what the Federal Government was do- 
ing for Delaware College the State now undertook 
to appropriate money for needed buildings. A new 
Machine Shop was put up northeast of Old College, 
and finally, in 1891, was built Recitation Hall. Like 
most other American Colleges, Delaware College in 
building anew ignored the good example of its elder 
day. In spite of serious defects in detail Old Col- 
lege was a building of dignity, charm and distinc- 
tion. Recitation Hall, however, whatever its abso- 
lute architectural merits, and they are certainly not 
great, was built with no attempt whatever to follow 
the style so well set by Old College and thus to secure 
unity of effect. Furthermore, scarcity of funds 
led the authorities to encroach with the new building 
upon the ripe and beautiful old campus, so that sev- 
eral handsome trees were cut down and the fine 
eft'ect of the well-placed Old College as seen from 
the street was sacrificed to an incongruous inter- 
loper. Now that Delaware College is well on its way 
toward a distinguished and beautiful development 
the mistake of almost thirty years ago presents a 
problem of the most embarrassing character. It may 
be said in extenuation of this mistake that it is 
exactly of the kind that some of the richest, oldest, 
and most celebrated universities of the United 
States have committed over and over again. The 
serene perfection of Old College now vainly glances 
its reproach at the solid and stolid stranger to the 
southeast, an unassimilable unit in an otherwise 
well-developed architectural whole. 

In the year 1901 the Legislature of Delaware ap- 
propriated $25,000 for the enlargement and repair 
of Old College. With this sum the building was 
thoroughly overhauled with a view to strengthen- 
ing its floors, and improving somewhat its gaunt 
interior aspect, while a large addition was made at 
the end of each wing parallel to the central portion 

51 



of the building. At the same time the architect in 
charge of the work, Mr. R. A. Whittingham, one of 
the few persons to appreciate the beauty of the old 
structure, designed and had executed subsidiary 
porticoes at the ends of the wings, facing southward, 
in consonance with the distinguished main portico, 
an improvement that was promptly recognized as 
architecturally correct, and vastly helpful to the gen- 
eral effect of the building. There was a great deal 
of opposition to the expenditure of so much upon an 
old building in some respects ill suited to the pur- 
poses it served, but the feeling that tradition was 
worth something prevailed, and Old College thus 
preserved and improved, has since been wisely 
thought worthy of a second and far more thorough 
and expensive renovation. 

Up to this time Delaware College was in chronic 
distress for funds, and only the care and intelligence 
of the Treasurer, George G. Evans, and the strict 
economy of the administration by Trustees and Fac- 
ulty enabled the institution to live within its means. 
Mr. Evans held the post of Treasurer for thirty-five 
years, until his death in 1904. When the College 
reopened in 1870 the salary of the President was 
fixed at $2000, that of each professor at $1000, ex- 
cept that the professor of modern languages received 
$600. As late as 1886, by an arrangement to which 
all the members of the Faculty assented, the 
Trustees divided the interest upon the invested 
funds of the College, except a sum of $380, between 
the President and the professors in an agreed pro- 
portion, by which apportionment the President re- 
ceived a trifle over $1800 a year, and each professor 
about $1050 a year. By that time the cost of living 
was considerably less than it had been in 1870, and 
very much less that it has been much of the time 
since the opening of the present century, so that the 
purchasing power of salaries in the period between 

52 



1 886 and 1900 was far greater than it would have 
been twenty-five years before the latter date or than 
it would be to-day. For most of the history of 
Delaware College, however, the salaries of both 
teachers and administrators have been relatively 
low. 

Dr. Raub's administration began amid conditions 
far more favorable than those faced by either of 
his predecessors since the resuscitation of the Col- 
lege, but there were still great difficulties ahead. He 
was a man of force and energy, with a remarkable 
power for work, and in spite of the inheritance of 
distrust that naturally came from recent painful in- 
cidents, the College soon began to grow. The student 
body increased from sixteen in the academic year 
1887-8 to twenty-nine in the next year, and ninety- 
seven in 1 89 1 -2. That was the high-water mark of 
Dr. Raub's administration, and even the increase of 
the undergraduate body brought the President 
under criticism as placing numbers above fitness, 
while other critics objected to his activities as a 
maker of textbooks, which they thought took time 
that should have been given to the College. As a 
matter of fact Dr. Raub could ill afiford to give up 
his work as a writer of text books for the salary 
paid his as President of Delaware College, For one 
reason or another the student body at length began 
to decline in numbers, and by the school year 1895 ^^ 
had fallen to seventy-one. Meanwhile criticism of 
the President continued and increased. An alumnus 
whose home was at Newark, vigorously and steadily 
assailed the administration in the columns of the 
Wilmington press and elsewhere, and the situation 
at length became a cause of much bitterness and 
almost a public scandal, so that the College seemed 
likely to suffer in the opinion of people throughout 
the State. Meanwhile Dr. Raub's health had some- 
what failed, so that he felt unable to go on amid the 

53 



adverse criticism of his administration. He ac- 
cordingly resigned the Presidency and continued 
his work as a writer of text books until his death 
some years later. Dr. Raub's associates in the 
Faculty, while recognizing the wisdom of his resig- 
nation, felt also that he was a man of more than 
common acumen and ability. 

At the retirement of Dr. Raub, George Abram 
Harter, Ph. D., who had long been connected with 
the College as Professor of Mathematics, was. 
chosen President for one year, and at the end of that 
time confirmed in his place. Dr. Harter was a man 
of more than, common scholarship, tactful and 
nicely consciencious. He was surrounded by a loyal 
Faculty, and supported by alumni anxious to enjoy 
a breathing time of peace. The Faculty had now 
grown to a considerable body, and the Experiment 
Station had made friends in the State. Dr. Harter 
gave his whole time to the w^ork of the College, and 
was largely released from teaching in order that 
he might give his attention to the executive task. 
The student body now began to grow again in num- 
bers. By the year 1900-01 it had increased to 
ninety- four, the largest number thitherto in its whole 
history, and at the retirement of Dr. Harter from 
the Presidency a dozen years later it had grown to 
one hundred and seventv-two. 



54 



MODERNIZA TION 



CHAPTER III. 

MODERNIZA TION 

ALTHOUGH Delaware College had been 
''modernizing" for some years before this 
• time, it was still in many respects far from 
abreast of current higher educational development. 
An Alumnus, now about a quarter of a century from 
his graduation, testifies that in literature and history 
''collateral reading" was unknown during his four 
years of undergraduate work. Perhaps the suffi- 
cient excuse for such a condition lay in this, that 
the College was in effect without a general library. 
A few admirable old books it had, among them a 
notable collection of the Scrip tores Latini in Usum 
Delphini, now a conspicuous and mostly undis- 
turbed ornament of the Department of Ancient 
Languages, whose head is currently believed to have 
the contents of the whole collection stored in his 
capacious memory, and the technical libraries of the 
Engineering and Agricultural Departments were 
growing, while Dr. Wolf had a valuable private 
library of books and periodicals relating to chem- 
istry and allied sciences, but the general library was 
made up mostly of what Charles Lamb called "books 
that are not books." In 1896, with the warm ap- 
proval of Dr Harter, a considerable appropriation 
for the general library was made, and for some 
years thereafter there was such an appropriation 



annually, a policy that tends to become permanent, 
though at times it has been unfortunately suspended, 
Professor W. H. Bishop, an able, faithful, and ex- 
tremely painstaking man, one of the experts of the 
Agricultural Experiment Station and Professor of 
Agriculture in the College Faculty, was made libra- 
rian, though at an utterly inadequate salary, and 
under his energetic work and intelligent super- 
vision, the books, old and new, were classified in 
accordance with the generally accepted system of 
library classification. A card catalogue was rapidly 
prepared, and the new books, together with all that 
was valuable in the old library, were housed in the 
large north room on the second floor of Recitation 
Hall. Not long after this time the library was 
transferred to the top floor of the same building, 
later still to Purnell Hall, as the Watson Evans 
homestead, on the edge of the campus, is now called, 
and yet again to a building at the southeast corner 
of Main Street and South College Avenue. There 
had been ''reading men" in College long before the 
general library was thus re-created, but the number 
had never been large. Now, with books, old and 
new close at hand, and a library open for most of 
the week, day and night, the habit of reading and of 
treating the library as an intellectual laboratory be- 
came far more popular. Doctor Sypherd, head of 
the English Department, has for years zealously 
promoted the growth of the Library, and Walter H. 
Bradley, of Philadelphia, a former resident of New- 
ark, has made many generous gifts in aid of such 



growth. 



The library, now numbering 25,000 volumes, is 
open night and day, not only during the academic 
year, but for most of the time in vacation, though 
unhappily not on Sunday. There is a paid librarian 
with student assistants. To crown this interesting 
development, so long delayed, the World- War led to 
the proposal for the erection at Delaware College of 

58 



a Delaware Memorial Library in honor of those 
Delawareans who fell in the cause of world-wide 
democracy. This building, which will probably be a 
reality of the near future, will prove one of the most 
striking ornaments of ''The Green." Some friends 
of Delaware College hope that a room in the library 
will be set aside for the beginning of an art museum. 

Overworke:d Teachers 

A matter in which Delaware College long showed 
itself still behind the times is the custom of setting 
men to teach by means of text-books unrelated or 
but slightly related to subjects of which they 
frankly confess themselves by no means masters. 
Many years before the period now under discussion 
a young man, called to teach German, humorously 
confessed in private that he managed the business 
by keeping twenty-four hours ahead of his pupils 
in a subject as new to him as to them. Nothing of 
this sort was possible at Delaware College, at least 
in the languages, ancient or modern, as late as the 
last decade of the nineteenth century, but in the 
first decade of the twentieth century some men were 
expected to teach subjects with which they were no 
more intimately acquainted than may be expected 
of a fairly educated man not too long out of College. 
When the State, however, founded in 191 1 a chair 
of History, there was a successful insistence among 
the Alumni and in the Board of Trustees and the 
Faculty that a historian trained in the schools be 
appointed to the place, and this change of policy 
marked an important turning point in the educa- 
tional development of the College, though it has not 
yet been possible to relieve all members of the 
Faculty from the teaching of unrelated subjects, as 
it has certainly been impossible to prevent some 
from being greatly overworked. 

59 



It is worth noting here, what the public is slow 
to realize, that the number of a professor's "peri- 
ods" a week may be an entirely misleading index 
as to the amount of his work. A lazy but super- 
ficially brilliant man might teach five periods a day 
for six days a week without being entitled to any- 
body's commiseration, while a faithful man might 
be cruelly overworked, with half as many periods, 
since a professor's preparation for a recitation, a 
lecture, or a laboratory exercise, often requires 
thrice as much time as the period of the recitation 
itself, the lecture or the laboratory exercise, and 
every thoughtful teacher will testify that he has sel- 
dom gone unprepared to a recitation, no matter how 
familiar the subject, without regretting such 
neglect. Besides the work of preparation for daily 
duties, a professor must give considerable time to 
periodicals dealing with his subject, must watch 
jealously for whatever is new in the art or science 
he calls his own. If he really loves his subject — and 
fruitless is apt to be the teaching of him that does 
not — he will wish to bring light of his own to some 
of the dark places in his special field of knowledge, 
though few men in the smaller colleges can be first 
of all investigators. In the studies that have to do 
with the several fine arts, more especially in 
the smaller colleges, where most pupils are unready 
for the more scholarly critical study of such subjects, 
the first requirement of the teacher is that he be 
inspirational in his teaching. If he is to be such 
he must have leisure not merely for undisturbed 
reading and meditation, but for stimulative social 
contact. Thus he may keep himself fresh in mind 
and spirit, quickly sensitive to whatever is good in 
new manifestations of his art or science, and respon- 
sively sympathetic with his pupils, who, being 
young, instinctively seek what is new. 

The popular notion that teaching, like being a 
60 



bishop, is "a clane aisy job/' takes no intelligent 
account of these long hours of preparation and 
planning, of study and investigation, or of the vari- 
ous activities related to the welfare of students and 
to school administration required of the modern 
professor. There are still soft berths in the educa- 
tional world for the clever man that loves ease, and 
the temptation of some teachers is to fall into a dull 
and dead routine, sometimes as a defense against 
crushing overwork, sometimes through native inert- 
ness of temperament, but perhaps the crying fault 
of modern American education is the absence of 
leisure for both teacher and pupil, the lack of oppor- 
tunity for that ripening and enrichment which 
come of close and joyous reading and congenial 
companionship. In the very spirit of hurry that 
possesses the educational world of to-day there is 
the special opportunity of the charlatan whose "long 
suit'' is a display of feverish activity. "And yet he 
seemed busier than he was," wrote Chaucer of such 
an one. 

By the time Dr. Harter came to the presidency 
Delaware College had made for itself a well-recog- 
nized high reputation as an engineering school, and 
its graduates were taking creditable places in vari- 
ous parts of the country as civil, electrical and 
mechanical engineers. Before his administration 
ended our graduates in the several branches of 
engineering were widely scattered not only over 
the Union, but in the Latin-American countries. 
Some of them confidently reported that they were 
able to face unabashed professional competition 
with graduates of the most famous technical 
schools. Professor Frederick H. Robinson, who 
retired a few years ago broken in health after occu- 
pying the chair of civil engineering for a quarter of 
a century, had the satisfaction of knowing that the 
men who went out from his classroom seldom failed 

61 



to do him credit in their subsequent professional 
life. He had the further pleasure also of learning 
from returned Alumni that they remembered not 
his severities as a teacher, not the inexorable 
demands of one who could ill brook aught but abso- 
lute faithfulness in the student, but his self- forget- 
ful devotion to the work of teaching. At this 
moment the Department of Engineering suffers 
from over-development and overwork consequent 
upon conditions that it shares with some other 
departments. 

One of the most painful incidents in the adminis- 
tration of Doctor Harter, but one for which he was 
not responsible, was the agitation for the removal 
of the College to Wilmington, led by Dr. Eugene W. 
Manning, Professor of Modern Languages. All 
who really knew Doctor Manning must recall him 
with pleasure as a man in whom was no guile, a rarely 
transparent character, devoted to his work, gener- 
ous beyond his means to all good causes, cheerfully 
ready to sacrifice himself to what he believed right. 
He was in addition to all this a delightful com- 
panion, full of kindly humor, sympathetic and char- 
itable in his judgments even toward those with 
whom he most radically disagreed. His influence 
upon the students was in the highest degree whole- 
some. At the same time his scholarship was ripe, 
and unspoiled by any touch of pedantry. Doctor 
Manning induced the Faculty to enlarge the elective 
system, perhaps beyond what was best for all con- 
cerned, and he was a warm and open advocate of 
co-education. Finally he came to believe that the 
College must necessarily fall short of its highest 
usefulness were it not removed to Wilmington, and 
with characteristic sanguineness of temper and 
infirmity of judgment springing from that defect, 
he felt sure that were the removal made, men would 
be found at Wilmington to add largely to its endow- 

62 



ment, and that Wilmington was the peculiarly fitting 
home for the College. A letter that he wrote on this 
subject to an acquaintance was, without the writer's 
intention, and as it were, by accident, published in a 
newspaper. It was a letter that he might properly 
have written, but its publication placed him in a 
somewhat embarrassing position. With character- 
istic courage he took the consequences, however, and 
assumed full responsibility for the public proposal, 
to remove the College to Wilmington. The proposal 
found no support of moment in either the Board of 
Trustees or the Faculty, and not a great deal in 
Wilmington, though Doctor Manning's eager 
urgence for a time impressed some of his fellows, 
among them the author this sketch. Doctor Man- 
ning persisted in urging the matter after the Board 
of Trustees had definitely declared against it, and 
in the end, as was inevitable, the affair led to the 
severance of his connection with the College. 
Nobody could doubt the unselfish purity of Doctor 
Manning's motives in this affair. His mistake was 
two-fold, first in believing that Wilmington was 
peculiarly fitted to be the seat of Delaware College ; 
second, in his entirely conscientious belief that duty 
to the College required him to urge this proposal 
in the face of the overwhelming disapproval of those 
responsible for the administration of the institution. 
Delaware College lost by Doctor Manning's depart- 
ure one of the wholesomest influences that the stu- 
dent body has ever felt, and it is satisfactory to 
know from the testimony of some who were his 
pupils that the man and his work were fitly valued 
by those for whom he so faithfully and self-forget- 
fully labored. 

A serio-comic incident of that same administra- 
tion grew out of the suspension of several students 
in the Spring of 1902. Some of the student body 
felt that the suspension was unjustified, and a 

63 



"strike" was proposed. According to the testimony 
of several who opposed the proposal, they would 
have been able to avert the strike but for the 
authoritative tone taken by Doctor Wolf in address- 
ing the student body upon the subject. Nobody 
acquainted with the Doctor's oddly mingled tem- 
perament, as often exhibited in impulsive kindness, 
sometimes in sudden but brief impatience or indig- 
nation, could have taken his brusqueness too seri- 
ously, but according to the pacifists of the occasion, 
the Doctor's hesitant and brief but emphatic address 
stung the majority to rebellion, with the result that 
all of the students, save the graduating class, who 
feared for their diplomas, and one youth who obeyed 
his father's order to take no part in the strike, 
walked out and were absent from classes several 
days. The most amusing aspect of this little war 
against constituted authority was the entirely amia- 
ble relations that subsisted meanwhile between the 
strikers and the Faculty. They came individually 
to some of the temporarily idle professors, and 
amicably discussed the pros and cons of the situa- 
tion, accepting with entire good humor the assur- 
ance that they were playing the part of undisciplined 
children. In the end all returned to their studies, 
and there were no further punishments inflicted. A 
proposal to recall the suspended before the expira- 
tion of their term was, however, overwhelmingly 
voted down by the Faculty. 

Perhaps this is the proper place to record another 
strike of the student body, which took place early 
in the present administration. In this instance the 
students, who by that time were self-governing, 
petitioned for a holiday from the Wednesday before 
Thanksgiving to the following Monday, a holiday 
for which there was precedent. As the College was 
then working under pressure to prepare as many 
as possible for future participation in the World 

64 



War, the Faculty denied the petition, with the result 
that the students walked out. All returned the fol- 
lowing Monday, and the penalty for this act of 
rebellion was a requirement to make up lost time 
and some reduction in marks. On the whole the 
temper of the student body was less amiable than 
on the occasion of the earlier strike. Both incidents 
were curious illustrations of crowd psychology, and 
the second was probably precipitated by the condi- 
tion of public unrest brought on by the war, to 
which condition the student body, with the keenly 
sensitive temperament of youth, was quickly respon- 
sive. 

On June 19th Commencement Week of the year 
1909 was darkened by the general knowledge that 
Dr. Theodore R. Wolf, Professor of Chemistry 
since 1871 and for most of that time State Chemist, 
lay dying after a stroke of apoplexy. His death 
came on June 22, and not only the College and 
its Alumni, but the whole State realized how great 
was the loss of both College and State. Doctor 
Wolf had come to Delaware College little more than 
a youth in years, though with the maturity of a man 
disciplined by faithful study, and seeming far 
beyond his age. He died at fifty-nine, still to all 
appearances vigorous and essentially young, with 
the reasonable hope of many more years in active 
service. In the long period of his connection with 
Delaware College Doctor Wolf had grown into an 
institution. His simplicity was delightful. His 
impulsiveness was amusing. His very foibles en- 
deared him to his friends, they were so clearly the 
"defects of his qualities." At ordinary times he was 
grave, often, indeed, rather severe in aspect, but he 
had the frank smile of a man simple and brave. A 
slight hesitancy of utterance, not quite amounting to 
an impediment, seemed at times to give point and 
charm to his speech, which charm was heightened 
by a rich manty voice and provocative laugh. In 

65 



aspect and bearing he was singularly distinguished, 
and without the slightest tinge of pose or pretence. 
The dignity of the man, like everything about him, 
was the unaffected expression of his nature. He 
had a fine head, carried well on ample shoulders, 
and a port and style that impressed all beholders. 
In class Doctor Wolf was exacting and severe 
rather than lax. His sense of humor, however, was 
sufficiently active to enable him to realize that too 
much cannot be expected of undergraduate youth. 
Perhaps his very love of his subject made him too 
indifferent in his treatment of those who were slow 
to develop any such attitude toward chemistry. To 
his wav of thinkinof it was vain to waste time on 
the misguided human beings that failed to see 
beauty in the goddess of his idolatry. With those, 
however, who really cared for the subject, he was 
ready to take infinite pains, and to such he showed 
the warmest side of his kindly and impulsive char- 
acter. 

Shortly after Doctor Wolf's death he was suc- 
ceeded in the double office of Professor of Chem- 
istry and State Chemist by Professor Charles L. 
Penny. The Trustees thus paid Professor Penny 
the handsome compliment of proving their confidence 
in one known to the Board for many years in his 
professional capacity, for after long service as 
Chemist of the Agricultural Experiment Station he 
had gone in 1907 to take a place at the Pennsylvania 
State College. Some years later Professor Penny 
gave up the office of State Chemist, but continued 
to occupy the chair of Chemistry, and thus gave 
himself exclusively to the work of teaching, a pro- 
fession for which he is well suited by taste, tempera- 
ment, education and native ability. Perhaps it is 
well to point out here that in view of Delaware's 
present, and even more her future development, the 
Department of Chemistry at Delaware College is 

66 



likely to be of constantly growing importance. Doc- 
tor Wolf from the first attracted graduate students, 
and with the growth of chemical industries at and 
near Wilmington the demand for well-equipped 
commercial chemists is likely to be one that Delaware 
College will be asked to supply. Graduate students 
should thus be more than ever attracted to the 
department. The sobering and steadying effect of 
such students in a small college is hard to over- 
value. -The Du Pont Company founded two scholar- 
ships in chemistry in the current year, each carrying 
$325 annually. 



The Agricultural Department 

Under the terms of the Federal law establishing 
agricultural experiment stations in every state of 
the Union, the Agricultural Experiment Station for 
Delaware became a department of Delaware Col- 
lege. The law was approved by the President 
March 2, 1887, but appropriations for these under- 
takings did not become available until the Spring of 
1888. Early in May of that year Dr. George D. 
Purington, of Missouri, was chosen as Director of 
the inchoate Station and soon after a building for 
the use of the station was placed a few yards east of 
Old College. The Federal funds for the establish- 
ment of the Station did not, in the judgment of those 
charged with the task of getting the new institution 
in working order, permit the use of sufficient money 
to put up an expensive building, and accordingly a 
rather small and far from beautiful brick buildini^ 
was put up and placed, unfortunately, where it in 
some measure took from the effect of Old College, 
a site that it still occupies without adorning, though 
it is no longer used for its original purpose. 

Doctor Purington held the office of Director only 
67 



a few months, and to his successor, Dr. Arthur T. 
Neale, who took active charge of the work Janu- 
ary I, 1889, is due full credit for the organization 
of the Experiment Station. Doctor Neale was a 
man of marked ability, great frankness, and 
strongly attractive personality. By technical 
equipment and practical experience he was probably 
as well fitted for the work he now undertook as any 
man in America, for he had been closely associated 
with eminent agricultural specialists in both 
America and Europe, and had done much highly 
important investigatory work as chemist of the New 
Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, as assistant 
for some years to Dr. W. O. Atwater, of Wesleyan 
University, Connecticut, the first director of any 
American agricultural experiment station, and as 
assistant to Professor Maerker, at Halle, Germany, 
the most eminent authority of the time in agricul- 
tural science. 

From the first Doctor Neale and his small staff 
were embarrassed by lack of funds. From 1889 to 
1906 the whole income of the Station was $15,000 
annually, and after the moderate salaries were paid, 
what remained was insufficient for all that the 
Director would like to have done. He was further 
embarrassed in early days by the attitude of the 
farming community toward his notion of the Sta- 
tion's proper function. Doctor Neale was first of 
all an investigator, with an unswerving devotion to 
painstaking accuracy, and an invincible belief that 
scientific study of agricultural problems, requiring 
patient and long investigation, would in the end be 
of more value for the advancement of agriculture 
than more strictly practical assistance to farmers in 
the hundred and one problems that they had to face. 
His education and experience led him to over-value 
laboratory experiments as compared with work in 
the open, and prevented him from urging the pur- 

68 



chase of land for such experimentation in the field. 
As the work of the Station became organized Doc- 
tor Neale won more and more the good will and 
confidence of the farmers whom he met at institutes 
and elsewhere, and he was led to enlist their aid in 
practical experiments and studies upon the farms 
themselves, though these undertakings were not 
entirely satisfactory in results, because few farmers 
could afford the expense necessitated by such 
experiments. Doctor Neale's extremely strong 
sense of his duty to use public funds with wise 
economy and in strict accordance with law led him 
to be, if anything, over-careful in all expenditures. 

A capable committee of the Board of Trustees 
constantly cooperated with Doctor Neale in the 
work of the Station, and the members of his staff 
loyally accepted his theory of Station work. As Dr. 
Frederick D. Chester, the first bacteriologist of the 
Station, has for some years been unconnected with 
either College or Station, it is proper here to recog- 
nize the great value of his work, and especially of 
the highly practical service he did to the cause of 
public health in Delaware. While showing great 
faithfulness and intelligence in fitting himself by 
hard study for unfamiliar work in connection with 
his regular duties, he also found time to write a 
valuable book, the result of original research. 

Doctor Neale was probably disappointed at the 
outcome of some experimentation, notably that car- 
ried on over a long period for the determination 
of the value which he hoped to find in sorghum cul- 
ture for the farmers of this State. On the other 
hand, some of his larger undertakings were highly 
successful, and in the face of sharp criticism and 
strong opposition, he did much to stamp out bovine 
tuberculosis. His most distinguished single service 
was the demonstration that anthrax, doing great 

69 



harm to cattle in parts of the State, was imported in 
goat hides brought to the morocco factories of Wil- 
mington. The factories ceased discharging their 
waste where it could reach the pastures, and the 
disease disappeared. 

In the later period of Doctor Neale's directorship 
the Station greatly enlarged its work and gave it 
a more practical direction. Meanwhile, however, 
Doctor Neale himself was suffering from the per- 
manent results of an accident in the course of duty, 
and his physical disability, borne in silence, and con- 
cealed from those about him, made the work of the 
Director more and more difficult, so that in view 
of resultant criticism and increasing friction, he 
resigned his office in 1906, just when the Experi- 
ment Station was about to receive greatly increased 
aid, both State and Federal. He died in 191 7, after 
many years of painful illness, borne with courage 
and patience characteristic of the man. It is mere 
justice to say that the value of Doctor Neale's serv- 
ices to agriculture in this State can hardly be over- 
estimated, and that the Experiment Station and the 
farming community at large are still profiting by 
what he and his small staff were able to accomplish 
amid the embarrassments with w^hich they had to 
contend.* 

Professor Harry Hayward succeeded Doctor 
Neale as Director of the Station in October, 1906, 
and shortly after his accession to the post, the Agri- 
cultural Department of Delaware College was 
organized to coordinate the experimental work of 
the Station with the teaching activities of the staff. 
The Department of Agriculture as now organized 
includes the Agricultural Experiment Station, the 



* For this account and estimate of Doctor Neale's services and 
character the writer is largely indebted to a paper prepared by John 
C. Higgins, Esq., and published in the Preceedings of the Delaware 
State Grange for 191 7. 

70 



Experiment Farm, the teaching activities of the 
staff in the agricultural courses of the two colleges, 
the agricultural extension work throughout the 
State, and finally within a very recent time, the 
training of teachers in agriculture under the pro- 
visions of the Smith-Hughes Act. These increased 
resources made possible a new development and a 
change of policy that mark a turning point of impor- 
tance in the administration of the Experiment 
Station. 

Early in the year 1907 the State took the impor- 
tant step in furtherance of the Agricultural Depart- 
ment's practical usefulness of buying and equipping 
a farm for experimental and instructional purposes 
on a large scale. The farm, known more than half 
a century ago as the ''Russell Estate," and after- 
w^ards as the ''Schultz Property," was purchased 
from James T. Dallett. It is a tract of two hundred 
twelve acres in Pencader Hundred, one mile south 
of Old College, bordered on the north by the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad and on the west by an old public 
highway, now in effect an extension of South Col- 
lege Avenue. This land is part of the historic 
Welsh Tract, a grant made by the Penns to a body 
of Welsh folk, mainly of the Baptist sect, in 1701. 
A large and comfortable dwelling on the farm 
serves as the residence of the Director. Ownership 
of the farm vests in the State. 

Equipped with such an area of land suitable for 
practical, illustrative experiments, and for the first 
time provided with adequate Federal aid, supple- 
mented by an annual appropriation from the State, 
the Department of Agriculture, of which the 
Experiment Station is now a part, has been able 
not only to profit by years of laboratory investiga- 
tions, but while continuing such researches, with 
well-equipped, modern laboratories, to superadd 

71 



many demonstrations and some commercial under- 
takings on a rather large scale. Orchards were 
planted on the farm and their development has been 
attracting the attentive interests of fruit growers 
not onl}^ in Delaware, but as well in the adjoining 
states. Important experiments in fruit-growing 
have been conducted and the results of these 
researches have reached thousands of farmers inter- 
ested in peach and apple growing. The orchards on 
the College Farm are looked upon as models. 

A herd of about twenty-five milking cows, regis- 
tered Guernseys, is maintained on the farm. These 
animals have been used both for experiment and for 
instructional purposes. Some cows have been 
developed as producers of milk and butter as well as 
for breeding purposes. In this herd there have been 
several noted animals. The College Farm also has 
fine examples of various breeds of pigs. It was on 
the College Farm that the champion hen of the 
world was developed, "Lady Eglantine," the details 
of whose amazing philoprogenitive instinct are 
faithfully recorded in the appendix to this chron- 
icle, where as well will be found an account of the 
even more astounding hermaphroditism of a bovine 
product also originating upon the College Farm. 

This livestock has been available at all times for 
classroom work, so that the students and the public 
accessible to Delaware College have had an oppor- 
tunity of dealing at first hand with some of the 
most notable specimens of farm animals grown in 
this country. The Agronomy Division has also 
attracted attention and interest by its varied experi- 
ments. A field of twenty-five acres, divided into 
more than 500 plots, has been set aside for the 
experimental study of farm crops, and of the under- 
lying principles concerned in the improvement of 
soils. 

An important service of the College is the part it 

72 



has played in bringing- the people of the State into 
closer relation with the work of the Experiment 
Station. The annual Farmers' Days held at the 
Farm have brought together upon a single occasion 
as many as 5000 visitors from the Peninsula, Penn- 
sylvania and New Jersey. On these occasions agri- 
cultural demonstrations and agricultural contests 
have been given, and some of the best speakers on 
agricultural topics have addressed the visitors. 

Another important aid to the development of the 
Agricultural Department of Delaware College was 
the Federal legislation known as the Smith-Lever 
agricultural law. Under this act Federal appro- 
priations supplemented by the State furnish means 
to maintain an agricultural agent and a home 
demonstration agent for each country, besides pro- 
viding for the employment of specialists in impor- 
tant phases of agriculture. These appropriations 
and girls' clubs, the object of which clubs it to 
enable the members to obtain, care for, and grow 
various farm animals to maturity, while observing 
and recording the details of feeding, care and 
growth. 

The Agricultural Staff now numbers about thirty 
persons, all of practical experience, moved by 
the spirit of public service, and experts in their sev- 
eral specialties. There are in addition a librarian 
and a considerable clerical force. As now housed 
in Wolf Hall and provided with the opportunities of 
the Farm and the means of direct contact with the 
people in all parts of the State, the Agricultural 
Department of Delaware College should have a 
future of increasing usefulness. 

Doctor Hayward was sent to France in February, 
1919, under the administration of the Y. M. C. A., 
as one of seven regional directors of agricultural 
education. The work to be done by the corps which 

73 



Doctor Hayward joined was part of the general 
educational work undertaken among the large body 
of American troops left abroad after the signing of 
the armistice with Germany. It was in effect a form 
of university extension, with regional headquarters 
at Rennes, Bordeaux, Tours, Havre, Paris, Toule 
and Dijon. For the period of Doctor Hayward's 
absence in Europe, Professor A. E. Grantham was 
made Acting Director of the Experiment Station, 
Professor C. A. McCue Acting Dean of the Agri- 
cultural Department, Dr. F. A. Hays Acting Super- 
intendent of the College Farm and Mr. M. O. Pence 
Acting Director of Agricultural Extension Work. 
Doctor Hayward returned and took his place again 
at the head of the Department in the Summer of 
1919, but as noted elsewhere in detail, he resigned 
his post in December of that year, to be succeeded 
by Professor McCue. 



College Sports 

Systematic college sports somewhat slowly 
developed at Delaware College, and perhaps not 
until near the second half of the current period of 
general modernization began to have an important 
place in undergraduate activities and to be cordially 
recognized by the Faculty as an essential element 
in college life. In the course of years the College 
has developed a widely recognized repute for 
thoroughly clean athletics, and has taken and held a 
creditable place in the world of amateur sports. 
Baseball in the Spring and football in the Autumn 
were at first the only sports systematically played by 
the student body, though there were tennis courts 
used by both students and members of the Faculty. 
In due time the students took part in the intercol- 
legiate meets and the Delaware College teams won 

74 



an honorable place in many events. The interest 
in systematic athletics was promoted and broadened 
by the building of a gymnasium, the funds for 
which, $15,000, were provided by the Delaware 
Legislature in 1905. Here are an indoor track, a 
drill hall, a swimming pool, shower baths and like 
conveniences. Provision for the comfort of visiting 
athletic teams was made a dozen years later when 
Old College was restored and beautified. 

In 191 2 the Faculty, in cooperation with the stu- 
dents and the Alumni, organized an Athletic Coun- 
cil, and this organization not only helped to raise 
funds for athletics, but largely shaped the develop- 
ment and determined the policies of that college 
interest. The Athletic Council is made up of two 
members from the Faculty, two from the Alumni, 
and one from each of the classes. Senior, Junior and 
Sophomore. The students have also an Athletic 
Association to care for details not within the direct 
control of the Athletic Council. At this time a 
salaried coach, who eventually became Physical 
Director with the title of Assistant Professor, was 
employed to develop and discipline the teams and 
direct individual work, and, thus the whole matter 
of athletics was systematized and placed upon a 
sound basis. As usual there were some students 
who took the unconsciously humorous attitude of 
regarding athletics as the chief object of academic 
life, and general education its casual ornament, but 
the normal sense of humor throughout the student 
body was sufficiently keen to prevent this view from 
being generally accepted. On the other hand the 
Faculty recognized the genuine value of athletics as 
a means of wholesome discipline for individuals 
and groups, and as a suitable outlet for youthful 
activities, and those so-called animal spirits, the 
very existence of which some prematurely old men 
seem to forget by the time they are two decades 

75 



away from the period of life when animal spirits 
play an essential part in forming the character and 
developing the abilities and aptitudes of youth. 
Thus sports tend to take their proper and important 
place in the process that gives a college its initial 
reason for being — the education of young men and 
women. 

Nothing has done so much for athletics at Dela- 
ware College as the making of Frazer Field. 
Joseph Heckart Frazer (1903), a young civil 
engineer whose character and conduct as an under- 
graduate had won him warm friends in the Faculty 
and the student body, and whose subsequent profes- 
sional career did him and the College great credit, 
died in 191 1, leaving a considerable fortune. His 
father, Eben B. Frazer; his mother, Helen Heckart 
Frazer, and his brother, Stanley J. Frazer, grate- 
fully recognizing what Delaw^are College had done 
for the son and brother, and realizing his loyalty to 
his Alma Mater, joined in presenting Frazer Field 
to the College as a memorial to the young engineer. 
The ground, eight-and-a-half acres, lying imme- 
diately east of the rear campus, was bought in 
1890, and under the supervision of Wilbur T. 
Wilson, a resident engineer and surveyor of 
Newark, and former student of the College, this 
area was skilfully laid off and graded so as to 
aft'ord a quarter-mile running track, a football field, 
a baseball diamond, and tennis courts, together 
with room for the parking of motor cars, and the 
seating of spectators. The whole field was sur- 
rounded by a wall, and trees were planted upon 
the parking terrace. Hard by is the gymnasium. 



76 



Expansion 



CHAPTER IV. 

Expansion 

IN THE second decade of the twentieth century 
there began for Delaware College a new era 
with the promise of such an expansion as not 
even the most enthusiastic alumnus had ever proph- 
esied. A few close observers of conditions became 
convinced six or eight years ago that the growth 
and usefulness of the College were pretty strictly 
limited by its income, and especially by the smallness 
of the general fund available for executive and 
administrative work. 

These men felt that unless means were found to 
exempt the President from exacting classroom 
work he could not give to the general administra- 
tion the time and energy required if the College 
was to attract those young men of Delaware who 
were going elsewhere for their academic education. 
At the same time these men felt that proper modern 
dormitories were also imperatively needed. Their 
thought as a whole was that the college must be 
modernized in order that it keep pace with its 
neighbors in other States, and that the first step in 
this direction would be to wake the Alumni to the 
necessities of the case. 

Accordingly in March, 191 3, a group of alumni, 
including Dr. W. O. Sypherd, Head of the English 
Department; E. C. Johnson, H. Rodney Sharp, Dr. 



Walter Steele, Hugh Morris, J. Pierce Cann, Rich- 
ard T. Cann, Jr., Charles W. Bush, George L. 
Medill, and George Mclntire, nearly all of the late 
90's or of the early twentieth century, dined by 
agreement at the Wilmington Country Club and 
discussed the affairs of the College. That meeting 
held session until half-past two A. M., and out of 
it grew a movement for the raising of an Alumni 
fund, the annual proceeds of which should be avail- 
able for the salary of the President. Those who thus 
undertook to increase the endowment of the College 
by awakening the alumni to an active and helpful 
interest in its welfare hoped to see an eventual 
expansion in more than one direction, but as events 
turned out they had builded even better than they 
knew. They agreed upon a committee, of which 
Mr. Sharp became chairman, to solicit aid from the 
Alumni, and the whole body was reached by this 
appeal. The first thought of those who started the 
movement was that $50,000 should be raised, but 
Mr. Sharp said "Why not $100,000?" and at this 
sum the committee boldly set its hopes. 

When the subscriptions of the Alumni had 
reached somewhat less than $20,000 Pierre S. du 
Pont, in a conversation with his brother-in-law, 
Mr. Sharp, offered to make a lump contribution of 
$50,000. This he did, and the entire sum of 
$68,000 was placed in the trusteeship of the Wil- 
mington Trust Company. About the same time 
Josiah Marvel let the committee know that an 
unnamed benefactor had volunteered to contribute 
$1,000 a year for five years toward the salary of 
the President, which was to be made $5000 a year. 
Between this contribution and the interest upon the 
Alumni Fund, the college was assured for at least 
five years of an adequate salary for a President 
who should give his whole time to the executive 
work of the institution, and should have efficient 
clerical aid. Thus was paved the way for an expan- 

80 



sion that soon far outran the hopes of those who 
had begun the movement. 

Dr. Harter, meanwhile, preferring his old and 
congenial place as Professor of Mathematics and 
Physics to the arduous and exclusively executive 
work to be demanded of the President under the 
prospective expansion, cordially co-operated with 
those who had fathered the undertaking, and 
showed himself a zealous, loyal and unselfish friend 
of the College. He gave notice that he would 
retire to his old post as soon as his successor should 
have been installed, and while the search for the 
new executive was going on, he lent effective aid 
in furtherance of the matter in hand. 

Before this time, the Board of Trustees, con- 
cerning whose attitude the original movers in this 
matter had felt some unnecessary trepidation, had 
taken the whole affair in charge. A committee of 
the Board went about the business of finding the 
new executive, and in due course called to the head 
of the College Dr. Samuel Chiles Mitchell. He for- 
mally took office at the opening of the academic 
year 1914-15, temporarily occupying a house on the 
grounds of the Women's College. 

Dr. Mitchell was born at Coffeville, Mississippi, 
December 24th, 1864. He took the degree of M. A. 
at Georgetown College, Kentucky, in 1888; was a 
graduate student at the University of Virginia in 
1 89 1 -2, and received the degree of Ph. D. for fur- 
ther graduate work from the University of Chi- 
cago in 1899. Dr. Mitchell occupied successively 
the chair of Greek at the University of Mississippi 
in 1890-91 ; that of Latin at Georgetown College, 
Kentucky, 1891-95, that of History at Richmond 
College, 1895-98; was lecturer in history at Brown 
University, Providence, Rhode Island, 1908-9; 
President of the University of South Carolina, 
1908-13, and President of the Medical College of 

81 



Virginia, 191 3- 14, in which latter year he was 
called to the Presidency of Delaware College. 

Dr. Mitchell, in answer to a request for a state- 
ment of what he regards as the essential under- 
takings and accomplishments of his administration, 
under date of April 21, 191 9, sends the modest 
record given below in its entirety as he wrote it, 
save for a few complimentary words with reference 
to the writer of this historical sketch. 

"In regard to your request for a brief statement 
of the more important events in my administration, 
I should like sincerely for it to be emphasized that 
whatever has been done is an outgrowth of the 
labors of the men previously connected with the 
College; that there were in the situation resident 
forces of great moment; that many of these forces 
happened to head up during the recent years, just 
as the trees full of sap are at this moment putting 
forth bud and leaf ; that the Faculty, Trustees, and 
friends of the College must have the credit for the 
plans wrought out; and that the progress through- 
out has been tidal and in no sense individual. The 
development was inevitable. The State and Alumni 
had gradually come to the point where expansion 
must occur. The careers of the men trained here 
by a few teachers with simple equipment and lim- 
ited funds had proved the worth of the College and 
Its services to the nation. Therefore to Mr. George 
M. Evans, Dr. Purnell, Dr. Wolf, Professor Rob- 
inson, Dr. Harter, and to all of the rest who labored 
here faithfully must be ascribed the further develop- 
ment of the College." 

Some of the things that might be mentioned are 

as follows: 

I. A structural purpose and ground plan for 
the development of the College. This achieve- 
ment belongs to Mr. H. Rodney Sharp, who has 

82 



put his whole heart into the enterprise; to Mr. 
Henry B. Thompson, who was the first to suggest 
the arrangement of the buildings around the 
green, as I understand; to Governor Charles R. 
Miller, who strengthened the College in the Legis- 
lature; to Mr. Charles B. Evans, who loves the 
College as his own child ; and to the people of the 
State. This structural purpose is the main 
thing, for into the execution of it will be natu- 
rally drawn the energies and resources of the 
people of the State. I count, therefore, a struc- 
tural purpose and the ground plan as the chief 
achievement of the Trustees in recent years. 

2. The entrance requirement has been made 
the completion of a four-year standard high 
school course or its equivalent. The Faculty 
handled this matter with tact and discretion, 
advancing the entrance requirement without 
alienating any part of our constituency. They 
have, thereby, given a strong impetus to the devel- 
opment of high schools throughout the State. 

3. A department of education has been estab- 
lished. This was most timely, as everything has 
tended to strengthen this department, such as 
the Smith-Hughes Act of Congress, which made 
available $10,000 a year for the training of 
teachers in trades and industries, in agriculture, 
and in home economics. This amount will 
become $20,000 in the course of three or four 
years. A plan for practice-teaching in the New- 
ark Public Schools has been successfully carried 
on, and this plan has in it the promise of greater 
co-operation between the College and the com- 
munity. 

4. A state high school conference has been 
established in connection with the annual inter- 
scholastic athletic and field meet, which will 

83 



bring together at the College regularly the prin- 
cipals of the high schools of this region with a 
view to aid them in their problems. 

5. A chair of Economics and Business Admin- 
istration has been established, in order to train 
men for the complex tasks of modern business as 
they have heretofore been trained for law, medi- 
cine, and theology. This chair met with instant 
favor and has appealed to a widening circle of 
students. 

6. A separate chair of Physics has been 
established, which is having an important bear- 
ing upon both engineering and the arts and 
courses. 

7. The English department has been 
strengthened by the addition of two teachers, 
making a total of four men in the English 
Faculty. Dr. W. O. Sypherd has made this a 
model department. 

8. An Infirmary has been established with a 
trained nurse in charge. The credit for this 
belongs to Mr. Eben B. Frazer. This has proved 
a great boon to the student body. 

9. A Business Manager has been appointed 
and a modern system of accounting has been 
installed, which is enabling the College to place 
before the people of the State clear and adequate 
statements of its finances. 

10. The original building has been con- 
verted into a social center for the student body, 
known as Old College Hall. In this building are 
found the commons, club rooms, etc. The credit 
for this belongs exclusively to Mr. H. Rodney 
Sharp and the Alumni. 

11. A new dormitory system has been begun 
with the erection of Harter Hall. 

84 



12. The Agricultural Department has been 
well housed in Wolf Hall, with new laboratories 
also for the department of chemistry. 

13. A President's home has been purchased. 

14. The office of Dean of the College has 
been created and Professor E. Laurence Smith 
has filled this position with signal ability. 

15. The office of Dean of Engineering has 
been created and filled by Allan R. Cullimore, 
a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. Dean Cullimore has shown organ- 
izing ability of rare order. He is at present a 
Major in the United States Army, but expects 
to return to Delaware College not later than next 
September. 

16. Salaries have been somewhat increased, 
and yet the salaries are far below what they 
should be. It has been suggested to the Com- 
mittee on Instruction that the gradation of sal- 
aries be somewhat as follow^s : 

(a) Dean, $3,300. 

(b) Head Professor, $3,000. 

(c) Professor, $2,25o-$2,750. 

(d) Associate Professor, $i,75o-$2,250. 

(e) Assistant Professor, $1,500-$ 1,750. 

(f) Instructor, $1,000-$ 1,500. 

This plan has not been adopted officially and 
yet in a rough way the College is gradually work- 
ing toward it. 

17. The annual report of the Treasurer is 
regularly published in pamphlet form and sent 
broadcast over the State. 

85 



1 8. The expenses of Delaware teachers to the 
Summer School are paid under certain con- 
ditions out of an appropriation of the Legislature 
for this purpose. The credit for this is due to 
the initiative of Governor John G. Townsend, Jr., 
and Secretary of State, Everett C. Johnson. 

19. The Saturday nearest to Washington's 
Birthday has been fixed upon for the concentra- 
tion of numerous interests at the College, such 
as the winter meeting of the Board of Trustees, 
the Alumni reunion, the Alumnae reunion at the 
Women's College, and a public meeting in the 
afternoon with an address by some prominent 
man. 

Mr. Pierre S. duPont, after watching with inter- 
est and appoval the fashion in which Dr. Mitchell 
had taken hold of his new duties, decided to come 
to the aid of Delaware College with a comprehen- 
sive plan of development and expansion, to be 
amply financed by himself. In the course of the 
next few years he gave more than $1,200,000 for 
grounds, buildings and endowment. After various 
projects had been debated, it was decided that the 
College should acquire the land between Old Col- 
lege, and the Women's College, and that upon this 
area should be planned the physical expansion of 
Delaware College for the next generation, and its 
permanent site for all time. For some time Mr. 
duPont acted as a strictly anonymous giver. 

The territorial expansion, so to speak, gave 
Delaware College a frontage on Main Street ex- 
tending on the north from North College Avenue 
for about 176 yards eastward, and from South 
College Avenue 144 yards eastward. The whole 
area in the grounds of the two colleges with the 
subsequently acquired IMinot Curtis homestead on 
the north side of South College Avenue, now the 

86 



official home of the President, is 88 acres. This 
whole area is gradually to be beautified with the 
buildings of the two Colleges and upon a plan of 
landscape gardening already adopted and actually 
entered upon in the spring of 1919. 

BeIvOved Old Coi^lege 

Important and interesting as are the new build- 
ings that mark the early stages of the expansion 
since 19 14, most of the Alumni since 1870 and the 
few survivors of the period before the suspension 
find nothing that appeals to their academic loyalty 
so strongly as the preserved and beautified 
''Oratory," now aptly called Old College. The 
sense of tradition saved this building more than 
twenty years ago, when it was enlarged and im- 
proved, at what then seemed an extravagant 
expense, against the opposition of some who felt 
that the money would have been better put into an 
entirely new structure. 

When the question of preserving the one physical 
structure linking the College with its earliest past 
came up again with the discussion as to what should 
and what should not be done in planning for the 
expansion of the new era, H. Rodney Sharp, who 
had lived in the old building as an undergratuate, 
and had seen its earlier enlargement and repair, 
strongly stood out against considerable opposition 
for such a renovation as should make Old College 
a permanent historical monument. Messrs. Day 
and Klauder, the supervising architects of the Col- 
lege, appreciating the architectural beauty of the 
old building, undertook its renovation with the 
enthusiasm of men who love their art. The result 
was that perhaps ten times the original cost of the 
structure was expended in remaking it to new 
uses, and assuring its permanence without materi- 
ally altering its familiar outward semblance. 

87 



To begin with, the architects unroofed the build- 
ing, and removed the whole interior, so that little 
remained except the outer walls. These were 
strengthened, the windows were considerably 
altered in size and proportion and the plan of the 
interior was transformed. The foyer of the second 
floor became in effect a handsome ante-chamber, 
admitting to what had been the ''Oratory" proper. 
This apartment in turn became a noble dining and 
assembly room occupying the height of two of the 
original floors with a gallery overlooking it and a 
thoroughly modern kitchen opening into it on the 
west. Beyond the kitchen is another dining-room, 
smaller, but large enough for at least 200 diners. 
The wings were replanned so as to afford apartments 
for various uses, and in the extension at right angles 
to the east wing and on the second floor was placed 
''The Lounge," a large, handsome and beautifully 
furnished apartment for the special use of the stu- 
dents. The balcony of this apartment is under 
the east subsidiary portico, and it commands the 
campus. On the ground floor were placed lava- 
tories, locker rooms, the janitor's room, two large 
apartments, one of them temporarily used as a 
chapel, and several smaller apartments. 

The exterior of Old College was altered in minor 
details, but not in its larger lines, except that the 
two-storied Chinese pagoda, known as the cupola, 
not part of the building in its original form of 
eighty-six years ago, but much beloved by some 
graduates of the last half century, was perma- 
nently removed in spite of some protests, as incon- 
sistent with the general Doric character of the old 
structure. The high wooden steps to the main 
portico were replaced by a granite stairway in two 
flights. The huge wooden Doric pillars supporting 
the main portico were replaced by others likewise 
of wood, but of better proportion and fluted. All 
of the exterior woodwork was renewed in perfect 

88 



taste, and painted white. The result of this reno- 
vating was to make of Old College one of the most 
beautiful academic structures in America. 

To the great satisfaction of returning alumni, 
the several hundred names and initials of students 
back into the fifties, of the last century and up to 
the latest graduate of this, cut in the bricks of the 
south wall beneath the main portico, remain intact, 
though a few of them, perhaps the earliest, are 
hidden by the new woodwork, which in several 
instances occupies more space than that which it 
replaced. That record is precious in the eyes of 
every loyal Alumnus and many a long absent son 
of Delaware has felt a sudden thrill as his eye 
fell upon the labored inscription scrawled in the 
brick by some vanished comrade of undergraduate 
days. 



SociAiv Activities 

In preserving, improving, and beautifying Old 
College consistently with its original architectural 
form and style, the authorities wisely made it also 
more than ever the social center of the institution, 
such as it necessarily had been when it was for 
many years the sole building on the campus. It was 
recognized, too, that the time had come for mod- 
ernizing the official relation of the College to the 
matter of board and lodging. There is a lingering 
trace of mediaevalism in American academic life, 
and the tradition of Delaware College at the resus- 
citation in 1870, inherited from the days of the 
founders now almost a century ago, was indeed 
decidedly mediaeval. The short-lived institution of 
prayers and recitation before breakfast was of 
clearly monkish origin, and the very name "Ora- 
tory" applied to the Assembly Hall, and printed in 
bold letters upon the glass of the transom had an 

89 



ecclesiastical connotation. The diningroom on the 
ground floor was not called the ''refectory," though 
its gaunt aspect suggested the severities of a 
brotherhood vowed to poverty. As a matter of 
fact, the domestic side of the College in the early 
seventies was genuinely homelike, for the excellent 
ladies who undertook the task of feeding somewhat 
fewer than two score youths did it in a motherly 
spirit. The ''commons" as later conducted by the 
students themselves lost the homely character of 
early days, pretty definitely broke with tradition, 
and was not exactly a finishing school of table 
manners. 

When Old College, rejuvenated and as to its 
interior arrangements transformed, began its new 
career as the academic social center, distinguished 
for comfort, fitness and beauty, it was decreed that 
resident undergraduates should dine at the com- 
mons officially conducted by direct representatives 
of the authorities. There was a considerable deficit 
for a time in the expense account, but new manage- 
ment improved the financial aspect of the commons, 
and the institution at the same time gained in 
popularity. 

As conducted under the efficient direction of Miss 
Carrie Stuart, the commons w^elcomed any alumnus 
who might be visiting Newark, and made a moder- 
ate charge to him for meals. In addition to this 
convenient provision, the commons entertains large 
visiting bodies, educational and others, that hold 
their conventions at Delaware College, and has 
proved to many professors a blessed refuge at 
times of domestic crises. It thus happens not infre- 
quently that in addition to dining as usual the whole 
student body, the commons may be called upon to 
dine from 150 to 200 visitors. The annual Alumni 
dinner has of late years been provided by the com- 
mons and served in the large dining hall to the 

90 



great satisfaction of the mody. In the early Sum- 
mer of 19 1 8 the Delaware Society of Philadelphia 
dined at the commons, and many young women of 
Newark volunteered to assist in waiting upon the 
tables. The society was so pleased with every detail 
of the meal and the service that it came again the 
next year. Perhaps the most severe test of the 
commons came in the Spring, Summer and Fall of 
1 9 18, when at one time the student body, two hun- 
dred enlisted men under special training, and their 
officers, and a number of other persons, most of 
them officially connected with the College, were 
regularly entertained for three meals a day. For 
most of one week in this same Summer the State 
Teachers' Institute, numbering about 400 persons, 
was also entertained at the commons. The diffi- 
culties of this period were increased by the neces- 
sity of conforming in some matters to the rationing 
system of Mr. Hoover, and by the constantly 
increasing scarcity of labor. All the complicated 
problems of this period were successfully met by 
Miss Stuart, Director of the Commons, and the 
expense account showed a favorable balance. 

Many significant influences and movements have 
grown out of the social center thus established at 
Old College. Before provision was thus made for 
an ample and dignified dining-hall and assembly- 
room, for the smaller dining-hall suitable for vari- 
ous needs and occasions, for the ''lounge" and for 
other convenient apartments in Old College set 
aside for various purposes, the needs to which the 
building now ministers were inadequately met, 
some of them, indeed almost utterly ignored. Aca- 
demic social life has since taken on greater variety, 
dignity and interest. Old College is the scene of 
dances, receptions, private dinners, discussions, 
public addresses. Alumni gatherings. Freer social 
relations between Faculty and students have been 
established, and the interest and loyalty of the 

91 



student body have been quickened. In addition to 
these strictly academic uses Old College lends itself 
to a service more and more demanded of Delaware 
College, which seems likely to become the natural 
meeting place of various bodies brought together 
for the promotion of good causes and the higher 
interests of community life, not merely local in 
scope, but of State-wide import. 

Greek letter fraternities appeared late in the his- 
tory of Delaware College, and authorization for the 
formation of the fraternities was somewhat hesi- 
tatingly granted by the Faculty in view of the dif- 
ference of opinion in academic circles touching the 
usefulness of such organizations. Now that fra- 
ternities have existed at Delaware College for more 
than a dozen years, nobody believes that their influ- 
ence has been unwholesome. Although the decay 
of the literary societies was somewhat hastened 
after the establishment of the fraternities, it is 
doubtful whether the sequence of events was other 
than temporal. Three national Greek letter fra- 
ternities are now well established — Kappa Alpha 
(Southern), Sigma Nu, and Sigma Epsilon. A 
fourth (Omega Alpha) is local. The three national 
fraternities own the houses they occupy. A chap- 
ter of the Phi Kappa Phi, an honorary fraternity 
devoted to the interests of scholarship, was estab- 
lished at Delaware College in 1905. 

A College Orchestra, organized in 1913, plays at 
chapel exercises and gives concerts in Newark and 
at other towns throughout the State. Music, like 
most of the fine arts, has been systematically 
neglected at Delaware College, as for the most part 
in American academic life, except at the great 
universities. With the building of an auditorium 
there should be a movement to give music an 
increasingly important place, if not in the curricu- 
lum, then in the social life of the two colleges. If 

92 



it were possible to have in the course of the Autumn 
and Winter at least half a dozen concerts of high 
character the whole student body would have an 
opportunity for musical culture not to be had else- 
where in rural Delaware. Out of the impulse 
stirred by such opportunity might come a local com- 
munity movement looking to musical culture, and 
in time an organization for providing an outdoor 
musical festival for the mid-spring season. Such a 
development would be a natural part of a growth 
such as should make the seat of the twin colleges 
a center for an ever-broadening musical culture in 
which the whole State should share. Perhaps it is 
not too much to hope that the auditorium of the 
future will have an organ worthy of a notable 
academic center. 

For many years the social aspect of religious life 
in the student body found expression in the local 
Young Men's Christian Association. This body has 
sent representatives to the annual meetings of the 
national organization, and during the world war 
the national organization maintaned an agent at the 
College in relation with the R. O. T. C. and the body 
of young recruits then under instruction. As in 
many other colleges, ''compulsory chapel" has much 
of the time since the resuscitation of Delaware Col- 
lege been a source of friction and dissatisfaction 
among the students and an embarrassing problem 
to Faculty. The system seemed one about equally 
difficult either to continue or to abolish. Nobody 
felt the extremely brief daily performance in any 
considerable degree edifying, though there were 
efforts to rid it of its purely routine and perfunctory 
character by making it the occasion for short 
addresses by visiting alumni or strangers. At 
length in the current college year the system was 
changed from a daily to a weekly meeting and a full 
"period" was set aside for the occasion, so that there 
was time for addresses of length sufficient to inter- 

93 



est and stimulate the students. The College Orches- 
tra was reorganized in the same year, and the 
musical service at chapel was improved. Students 
belonging to other than Christian bodies are excused 
from attending the service. 

It is symptomatic of the increasing importance 
of agricultural studies at Delaware College that the 
Faculty of Agriculture and the students of that 
science should have organized and maintained the 
Agricultural Club which publishes monthly 
throughout the College year ''The Delaware 
Farmer." This publication gives out scientific 
facts immediately applicable to local farmers' 
problems, and seeks to place before the public the 
work of Delaware College. The Agricultural Club 
is under the management of the students. It meets 
weekly to discuss class work and farm practice, 
and it provides lectures by agricultural experts. 

A helpful and promising development of the 
social side in Delaware College came with the 
organization of the Faculty Club in the Winter of 
19 1 8- 1 9. The occasion that immediately led .to 
the organization of this club was a reception to the 
Freshman classes of the two Colleges, given by the 
Faculty on Saturday, January 11, 1919. This 
affair, which brought together the two classes 
mentioned, and the teaching bodies of both Col- 
leges, proved so agreeable that the idea of organ- 
izing such a club was then and there mooted, and 
accordingly, at a meeting held on February 3rd, 
the Faculty Club took definite shape. The follow- 
ing officers were elected : President, W. O. Sypherd ; 
Vice-President, George A. Harter; Secretary- 
Treasurer, Arthur Wilkinson, Business Adminis- 
trator. An Executive Committee consists of the 
regular officers and two other members were chosen 
and also a Social Committee of three members. At 
the October meeting of 19 19 the officers were re- 

94 



elected for a year. The club room has been taste- 
fully furnished by H. Rodney Sharp. 

Active membership was restricted to the mem- 
bers of the Faculty and male members of the Ex- 
periment Station staff, the Extension Department 
connected with the Department of Agriculture, and 
the Business Administrator of the College. Provi- 
sion was made for the election of honorary mem- 
bers by a two-thirds vote of the active members. 
The annual dues were placed at five dollars. A 
room on the ground floor of the East Wing of Old 
College Hall was assigned to the Club for tempo- 
rary quarters. 

In the spring of 191 9 the students formed an 
organization to keep in touch on the one hand with 
the Alumni, on the other with the high schools of 
the State from whence future students will be in 
large measure drawn. In thus reaching out upon 
the part of the student body to establish relations 
with the academic past and the academic future there 
is a sign of a livelier loyalty, and a closer solidarity. 
The organization will act through an executive 
council charged with the duty of stirring the activ- 
ities of Alumni in local communities throughout the 
State, and with the further duty of keeping the 
high schools informed of what goes on at the Col- 
lege, and thus of exciting the interest of prospec- 
tive students, and stirring the ambition of some 
who would not otherwise undertake to prepare for 
entrance. 

For some years past the Alumni have shown an 
increasing interest in the affairs of Delaware Col- 
lege. In 191 5 the Alumni Association appointed a 
committee to solicit contributions to a loan fund, 
to be lent to deserving students upon their promis- 
sory notes as an aid to help them through college. 
In the next year such a fund, amounting to $2200 
was raised by the activity of Josiah Marvel and a 

95 



few of his friends, placed for administration with 
the Newark Trust and Safe Deposit Company, and 
loaned in small sums during the next three years to 
forty-one students, some of whom but for this aid 
would probably have had to leave college. Half 
of the amount was paid back during this period by 
the borrowers, and re-loaned, so that the amount 
of the loans was $3300. 

For many years the Alumni Association has 
offered prizes in oratorical contests. Local alumni 
associations have been formed at Pittsburgh for 
Western Pennsylvania; at Boston for New Eng- 
land, and such an association is likely soon to be 
formed in New York. 

In the Fall of 191 9 the urgent need of a tempo- 
rary engineering building, and the equally urgent 
need of increased salaries in the teaching force led 
to a rapid canvass for a sum of $100,000, in which 
undertaking an efficient committee of the Faculty 
and a hustling band of canvassers had the hearty 
co-operation of the press throughout Delaware, 
with the result that in less than a fortnight two- 
thirds of the sum was raised. This successful under- 
taking ranks with the earlier movement for the 
raising of an alumni fund, as hopeful evidence that 
those who have profited by what Delaware College 
gives her students will hereafter show themselves 
fully alive to the loyal obligation to stand by their 
Alma Mater in all times of her need for material 
aid. The temporary engineering building, bought 
of Du Pont de Nemours Company, was put up in 
the Winter and Spring of 1920, and largely equipped 
with gifts from the same company. 

Wars and Military Training 

Although Delaware College was slow to develop 
an efficient military department with effective mili- 

96 



tary training, the progress was steady from the 
time when a commissioned officer of the regular 
army was first assigned as commandant of cadets. 
For the better part of the decade 1875-85 military 
instruction was suspended. Professor Frederick D. 
Chester volunteered in 1887 to reorganize and drill 
the cadet corps after this long suspension of activi- 
ties, and he managed to keep up undergraduate 
interest in the matter until the War Department 
made assignment of a commandant. As thus reor- 
ganized by Professor Chester the cadet corps 
adopted a blue uniform of considerable magnifi- 
cence. 

When the Spanish War came the cadet corps was 
in such condition that its members proved valuable 
aids in preparing the Delaware Militia, encamped 
at Middletown, for active participation in the war, 
although the Delaware troops were not sent abroad 
to see actual fighting. With the emotional enthu- 
siasm natural to young men many of the under- 
graduates volunteered for service, and a few of 
those who obtained commissions remained perma- 
nently in the regular army, and as officers of con- 
siderable rank took part in the World War twenty 
years later. Lieutenant Walter H. Gordon, who 
was assigned to command the cadet corps in 1896, 
served on the French front in the World War, at 
first as Brigadier General, later with the rank of 
Major General. It is perhaps w^orth noting that in 
answer to a letter congratulating him upon his pro- 
motion to a brigadier ship General Gordon wrote 
saying with the utmost warmth that the happiest 
years of his life were those he passed as command- 
ant of cadets at Delaware College, and speaking 
with great pleasure of those with whom he was asso- 
cited during that time. 

If the Spanish War deeply moved the Faculty and 
student body of Delaware College, the World War 

97 



of 1914-1918 availed at length for a time to trans- 
form the institution into a military camp. During 
the fateful two years and a half that the Allies of 
the Entente struggled manfully against the power- 
fully organized and amply equipped central empires, 
the College shared with the whole country in the 
thrilling interest of the conflict. When at length 
came our declaration of war, the sympathy of the 
institution was warmly with our friends of the 
Entente. Students were advised by the Faculty to 
go on with their studies, but the excitement of the 
time made study difficult, and before long the 
selective draft began to take the Alumni from one 
to ten years graduated, while undergraduates 
strained hard at the leash. The second draft swept 
all the students, many prospective students, and 
most of the Alumni between the ages of 31 and 45 
into its comprehensive net. Many eager young men 
already in college or intending to enter in the Fall 
of 1 91 8 were deeply stirred by the prospect of being 
immediately enrolled in the army, and shortly 
crossing to the scene of conflict, and there was much 
disappointment w^hen it was discovered that men in 
college below the age of 21 and those of like age 
prepared to enter would be mustered into the army, 
indeed, but that they would not be permitted to 
volunteer, and would be left to their studies at col- 
lege so long as they were not actually needed for 
military purposes. 

The severe epidemic of Spanish grippe or influ- 
enza, which sw^ept over the country in the Autumn 
of 19 1 8, ravaged Newark and delayed for some 
weeks the permanent opening of the College. The 
term began September i8th, but the students were 
sent home October ist, though about 200 drafted 
men, the second assignment of such, sent to the 
College for training as mechanics and electricians, 
remained and through the strict enforcement of 

98 



military discipline among them, the disease, from 
which many of the drafted men as well as some of 
the students suffered, was kept in check and finally 
brought under control. Meanwhile Harter Hall and 
Purnell Hall had been used as local hospitals and 
the lounge of Old College was opened as a dormitory 
for part of the drafted men in order that their 
dormitories, where men were too much crowded in 
view of possible infection, might be relieved. The 
Woman's College, where many students had the 
influenza, was also closed for a time. 

When at length College reopened on October 28th 
the students had been temporarily brought back in 
small squads and inducted into the army, so that all 
not exempt because of physical unfitness became 
soldiers, with the uniform and pay of such, and sub- 
ject not only to drill and instruction, but to strict 
military discipline. With the induction of most stu- 
dents into the army, the establishment of strict mili- 
tary discipline, and the expansion of military in- 
struction far beyond the days when such instruction 
was merely incidental to the college life, student 
government was suspended, and many studies were 
temporarily stricken from the curriculum or disal- 
lowed their usual number of hours. At the same 
time the College year underwent marked alterations. 
It was now divided into four sessions, the Summer 
vacation was to be greatly shortened, and an inten- 
sive system of work was introduced in order that 
students might be graduated in three years instead 
of four, and trained soldiers fit to become officers 
might be rapidly furnished to the army. 

By reason of the war and the special patriotic 
work undertaken the twin colleges afforded instruc- 
tion in the year 19 18- 19 to a far larger number of 
persons than had ever before passed through the 
institution in a single year. The Students' Army 
Training Corps numbered 215. There were more 

99 



than lOO students at the Women's College. Two 
hundred teachers were trained in the Summer 
School of 1918. About 400 drafted men in succes- 
sive groups were intensively trained as technicians 
while also receiving military instruction and drill. 
The total attendance therefore exceeded 900. A 
small group of students physically disqualified for 
military service went on with their regular studies 
for the usual degrees. 

Many of the Alumni of Delaware College, several 
of the professors and a number of undergraduates 
volunteered for active military and naval service of 
the United States, while others of the Alumni, stu- 
dents. Faculty and undergraduates, undertook war 
work of various kinds. J. P. Wright, son of Samuel 
J. Wright, a Trustee of the College, was chairman 
of the Local Draft Board for New Castle County, 
an appointment made May 19, 19 17. With him 
were associated Dr. W. O. Sypherd, head of the 
English Department, who gave for many months 
the greater part of his time to the work of the 
board; Professor George E. Dutton, of the same 
department; Dr. Walter H. Steel (1895); George 
L. Townsend (1894), who acted as Appeal Agent, 
and Charles B. Evans (1886), who was chairman 
of the Legal Advisory Board. These gentlemen 
constituted one of the most efficient draft boards in 
the whole country. Dean E. Lawn-ence Smith 
became in the Summer of 191 8 Director of the Mili- 
tary Training School for Enlisted Men maintained 
at the College. Professor Allan Reginald Culli- 
more, Dean of Engineering, obtained leave from his 
regular duties and was for many months occupied 
elsewhere in teaching men who had suffered the loss 
of limbs in the war how to prepare themselves for 
useful activities. Several members of the Faculty 
resigned their posts to enter the employment of the 
Government or of private concerns engaged in war 

100 



work. Professor Clarence Albert Short, Mathe- 
matics and Engineering, entered the army with the 
rank of Major and was long usefully employed on 
this side of the water. Dr. Harry Hayward, 
Director of the Experiment Station, as noted else- 
where, went to France some months after the close 
of the war to assist in organizing educational work 
among the men of our army abroad. Many of the 
Faculty and the Experiment Station who remained 
at their posts made themselves useful in one form 
of war work or another, and both colleges lent them- 
selves to the furtherance of the Government's needs 
at every turn. 

When the entrance of the United States into the 
World War came to halt the building of the 
expanded Delaware College, Wolf Hall, given over 
to science and the Agricultural Department, had 
been completed, as had Harter Hall, the first two 
units of the new dormitories, and Old College had 
been renovated. As the needs of the Women's Col- 
lege were pressing, the first unit of the handsome 
new dormitories planned for its students was finished 
after our entrance into the war. Further develop- 
ment of grounds and buildings was halted, however, 
though the expansion of the teaching force went on, 
and every available structure at the command of the 
two colleges was used in the effort to find room for 
the work of investigation and instruction. An 
engineering building, the Memorial Library, and a 
new dormitory for men will probably come next in 
order. As the demands of the country for war 
steadily grew Delaware College was forced, in 
response to such demands, to curtail its accustomed 
activities as far as possible in order to do its whole 
patriotic duty, so that before the armistice of 
November, 191 8, the institution was transformed 
into a veritable ''shop of war," while, as detailed 
above, many of the student body and the Faculty 

101 



were absent upon military or other duty imme- 
diately concerned with the great conflict. 

Demobilization actually came to Delaware Col- 
lege a month after the amnesty, and on December 
13th the return to civilian academic life was formally 
announced when the order for demobilization from 
General March was read, together with his congrat- 
ulatory message, and the demobilized student sol- 
diers received their month's pay. The return to 
civil life was marked by the resumption of the tra- 
ditional war between Sophomores and Freshmen, 
and a "smoker" and athletic entertainment in the 
evening. The joy of the student body and Faculty 
in this transformation of academic life seemed to 
prove that militarism had gained few converts. 

Dean Smith, who set himself to the task of col- 
lecting and collating the statistics and history of 
Faculty, student and Alumni activities in the great 
World War has furnished the summary of his mate- 
rial here given. He speaks somewhat diffidently as 
to actual figures because he found it hard to be sure 
that his information was authentic and final, and 
was obliged from time to time in the course of his 
investigations to amend and correct what he had 
hoped was complete and accurate. Ten members of 
the Faculty were actually engaged in war work. 
All other members of the Faculty were engaged in 
either vocational training in relation to the war or 
in the work of the student army training corps. 
The Dean and the whole teaching force of the 
Women's College, as organizers and managers of 
local committees for the promotion of war work 
in various forms, gave valuable service, and the stu- 
dents of the Women's College did their full share of 
such work. Thirty of the young women volun- 
teered for work in the College war garden. 

The College contributed of its Faculty, Alumni 
and students to active military service almost exactly 

102 



300 men. Of these nearly one hundred went abroad, 
and most of them saw service at the front. Eight 
died in the service at home or abroad, one was 
injured by accident, one was made prisoner, and 
three were decorated. Seven of the nine wounded, 
the one injured and the three decorated had distin- 
guished themselves in College athletics. Of those 
taking part in the war three were colonels, two lieu- 
tenant colonels, seven majors, twenty- four captains, 
sixty-nine second lieutenants. More than 80 per 
cent of the whole number held commissions. Ac- 
cording to Dean Smith's information not a blot was 
fund upon the record of any Delaw^are College man 
serving in the war. A memorial meeting in honor of 
our dead in the war was held at Wolf Hall Febru- 
ary 22, 1919. 

In addition to the personal service thus rendered 
in actual war, the faculties and students of both col- 
leges bought about $30,000 worth of Liberty Bonds, 
subscribed $4500 in War Savings Stamps, and 
raised about $7200 in Y. M. C. A., Red Cross and 
other "campaigns" for war funds. Thus, when 
Delaware College entered upon its academic year 
1918-19, it was mainly as an adjunct of the United 
States Army. As such it w^as officially "No. 351, 
Students' Army Training Corps, with every physi- 
cally fit undergraduate a member of the army, under 
military discipline, clad in uniform and entitled to 
soldier's pay. There were two exciting days and 
nights in November of that year, the first at the 
premature news of the armistice, and again when 
the veritable news of that event reached Newark 
on the eleventh of the month. 

Just as soon after the armistice as permission 
could be had from the authorities at Washington, 
Delaware College returned to the paths of peace. 
Grounds and buildings were restored to their old 
uses. The system of military instruction was reor- 
ganized "on a peace footing," with a reduction in 

103 



the number of required periods for drill and the 
study of military science. Under the new conditions 
of peace the student body of Delaware College, 
which had fallen in the college year 191 7-1 8 to 164 
men, rose to 207. For the first time in some years 
the Freshman and Sophomore classes were almost 
exactly equal in numbers, with the former at 66 and 
the latter at 67. In that year the engineering stu- 
dents numbered almost exactly half the student 
body, 105, as compared with 58 in the Arts and 
Science course, and 44 in Agriculture. 

Late in the fall of 1919 friction of some years' 
duration culminated in the resignation of Dean 
Hayward as head of the Agricultural Department. 
Many of Dean Hayward's subordinates, believing 
him the victim of injustice and the department a 
sufferer from unfair discrimination, rallied strongly 
to his support, and asked that whatever the decision 
as to his resignation, the appointment of his suc- 
cessor should be delayed until the whole situation 
could be critically examined. The students in large 
numbers signed a petition to the Board of Trustees 
asking an investigation of the matter, and followed 
this up with another petition critical of the Board. 
John E. Greiner, as President of the Alumni Asso- 
ciation, called a committee to undertake an investi- 
gation intended to discover, if possible, the under- 
lying causes of alleged discontent in the Faculty and 
the student body. This committee held private 
hearings in the Faculty Club December nth and 
1 2th, and an adjourned meeting a week later at 
Wilmington. The Agricultural Committee of the 
Board of Trustees conferred with the Alumni Com- 
mittee at both meetings, and the outcome of the 
investigation and the conference of the committees 
was a report from the Alumni Committee made to 
the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. 
As the Alumni Committee had questioned witnesses 

104 



under pledge of holding their testimony as confi- 
dential, details of such testimony were not com- 
municated, but the committee made it known that 
the investigation had brought to light much discon- 
tent and frank criticism of college administration. 
The committee urged that the expense account 
for administration, care of grounds and build- 
ings, all of which had been criticized, needed criti- 
cal examination at the hands of the board, but 
made no recommendation as to Dr. Hayward, and 
ignored the intimation in the second petition of the 
student body that there had been discrimination by 
the college administration against service men upon 
their return from the world war. 

The immediate outcome of the whole agitation 
was the appointment of Professor Charles A. Mc- 
Cue, S.B., horticulurist of the Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station, as Dean of Agriculture, to succeed 
Dr. Hayward, whose resignation was accepted, and 
the issuance of a statement by the Executive Com- 
mittee of the Board. This statement declared the 
readiness of the Board at any time to welcome 
Alumni co-operation and investigation, but depre- 
cated such action by "self-appointed" committees, 
and the attempt to obtain information by direct 
questioning of the President and Faculty rather 
than through the Board of Trustees, as likely to be 
subversive of discipline. At the same time the Ex- 
ecutive Committee, expressed the opinion that the 
spirit of unrest at Delaware College was merely 
part of a widespread phenomenon in educational 
and other circles largely due to the unnatural con- 
ditions attending and following the world war, 
rather than the outcome of conditions peculiar to 
the local situation. It seemed to be the opinion of 
the committee that the increased cost of living had 
been felt painfully by members of the teaching 
force, and the experts and others of the Agricul- 
tural Department, and that many recent changes in 

105 



these bodies had been due mainly to the necessity 
that such men felt for seeking better paid employ- 
ment. As a matter of fact the committee accepted 
the resignation of Professor A. H. Cullimore, Dean 
of Engineering, who had been called to the head of 
a college at Newark, N. J., at a large advance over 
his salary as Dean; that of Professor Clarence 
Albert Short, Professor of Mathematics and En- 
gineering, who was taking a post of responsibility 
in a local manufacturing concern at an advance 
upon his professional salary. Later Professor A. 
E. Grantham presented his resignation as Agrono- 
mist of the Experiment Station, having accepted 
an attractive offer in business life. The students 
made a handsome apology for the tone of their 
second petition, explaining that it had been prepared 
under a misapprehension. 

It is true, of course, that the unrest of the past 
few years at Delaware College has been in large 
measure one with the phenomenon elsewhere, but 
it has also had peculiar local significance. Part 
of the condition has been due to "growing pains," 
for the expansion of the institution has suddenly 
imposed burdens, executive, administrative and 
educational, such as have embarrassed many, and 
caused discontent and criticism. Eor example, the 
unexpectedly large freshman class admitted in 1919 
has been a cause of embarrassment and of over- 
work to many members of the teaching force. Sal- 
aries have risen slowly, and have not, by any means, 
kept pace with the increased cost of living, while 
some of the personnel of the Agricultural Depart- 
ment have not shared in the advance of salaries. 
The effect of the hardships thus imposed upon many 
has been to cause rapid changes in the personnel 
of the college, so that the institution threatens to 
present the aspect not of a stable organization but 
rather of a procession, a condition that breaks the 
continuity of work in the Experiment Station, and 

106 



tends to prevent the teaching force from acquir- 
ing local loyalty and the tradition of the place. 
President Mitchell and the Board of Trustees, as 
a matter of fact, had been facing this situation for 
months, and endeavoring as rapidly as possible to 
find a way out, as was instanced by the effort in 
the Fall of 19 19 to collect an emergency fund of 
$100,000. 

As the cost of living rose during and after the 
world war, all salaried persons and wage-earners 
increasingly felt the pinch. Wages rose far more 
rapidly than salaries, so that before long the 
smaller salaries of persons in the teaching force at 
Delaware College and the Women's College were be- 
low the wages of the better paid in the domestic 
and mechanical departments. Meanwhile many of 
those in the teaching force and in that of the Ex- 
periment Station were called away by the war, 
while others were attracted by better salaries in 
various occupations or in other colleges. The places 
of some such were filled by strangers who could 
be induced to come only by the offer of higher sal- 
aries than those of some who had faithfully served 
the college for years. Discontent naturally arose, 
and it was accentuated by the living conditions at 
Newark, where the demand for housing somewhat 
raised rents and the growth of the Faculty forced 
many of the academic community to crowd into 
narrow quarters. The normal social life of the 
community was also restricted as never before, 
since the accustomed hospitality was impossible in 
households without servants, so that the new- 
comers had small opportunity to make acquaintance 
with one another and with older colleagues. 

All other colleges were suffering from like con- 
ditions, and Delaware College, like the rest, had 
to find some way out. In the dearth of funds 
caused by the unavoidably large expenses attend- 
ant upon the recent physical development of the in- 

107 



stitution, and by the unexpected continuance of ris- 
ing prices after the close of the war, the canvass 
to obtain from the alumni and others in Delaware 
a fund of $100,000 in aid of current expenses was 
undertaken in the Fall of 1919. Part of the sum 
realized — about $70,000 — was applied to increasing" 
salaries, and the increase was made to some extent 
retroactive. The relief thus given was, as every- 
body realized, insufficient, and President Mitchell 
continued to urge the necessity of further provision 
for the Faculty. 

Shortly after the resignation of Dr. Hayward 
was accepted, and before his successor was ap- 
pointed, the Executive Committee of the Board 
asked that the deans of the Faculty and representa- 
tives of Delaware College, in all its branches, and 
of the Women's College meet in conference at 
Newark with the Executive Committee in order to 
discuss the question of salaries and any other mat- 
ters that might be regarded as causes of dissatis- 
faction. Various members of the Faculty Com- 
mittee criticized details of administration, and made 
suggestions for changes of methods in their own 
departments, and there were suggestions from 
members of the Executive Committee. Dr. Mitchell, 
who was present, answered some of the criticisms 
made, and explained several matters that seemed 
to need explanation. It was agreed, at the sug- 
gestion of the Executive Committee, that a perma- 
nent committee of the Faculty should be formed 
to meet at intervals with the Executive Committee 
for the discussion of matters pertaining to .college 
administration. 

Impressed with the number of changes in the 
Faculty, and the difficulty of filling vacancies at 
the salaries of those who had gone, or were ex- 
pected to go, the Executive Committee of the Board 
was more than ever convinced that the inadequacy 
of salaries was a prime factor in whatever discon- 

108 



tent existed. Accordingly, before the joint meeting 
of the Executive Committee and the Faculty Com- 
mittee was held, the former broached a plan for 
raising as rapidly as possible an endowment fund 
of $3,000,000, of which $2,000,000 should be avail- 
able for salaries, and asked Mr. Wilkinson, the 
Business Administrator, to prepare a schedule of 
salaries to be such as might be expected to attract 
and keep a competent body of teachers and investi- 
gators. The schedule is as follows : Deans at least 
$4,000 a year with allowance of $400 for house rent 
or a free official residence; head professors, with 
three or more assistants, $3,700 a year; professors, 
$3,500; associate professors, $3,000; assistant pro- 
fessors, $2,500; instructors, $1,800 with an assured 
annual increase of $100 a year until the salary 
reaches $2,200; assistant instructors, recent grad- 
uates seeking collegiate fellowships, $1,200 a year 
with guarantee of $100 a year increase up to $1,400 
a year. 

It was estimated that $1,000,000 of the proposed 
fund would be needed for various developments. 
An immediate need would be a permanent engineer- 
ing building to cost at least $400,000, with an addi- 
tional $100,000 for equipment, and the interest on 
$200,000 for maintenance and repairs. Of the re- 
maining $300,000 a new dormitory would take 
$150,000, $75,000 would be needed for the endow- 
ment of the arts and sciences, and $75,000 for agri- 
cultural equipment. 

March 26, 1920, Doctor Mitchell announced his 
resignation of the presidency to take effect Septem- 
ber I, and his acceptance of a call to the chair of 
History and Political Science at Richmond College. 
It was from Richmond College that he was called 
to Delaware College in 19 14. He had been instru- 
mental in having Richmond College removed from 
the heart of Richmond to a suburban district where 
it has ample space for all its needs. There was an 

109 



effort several years ago upon the part of the 
authorities at Richmond College to recall Doctor 
Mitchell to his old chair of History and Political 
Science, and the place was made attractive by the 
offer of an adequate salary, but he declined the offer 
upon grounds that were subsequently removed, 
so that when the call was renewed. Doctor Mitchell 
accepted, as he himself said, from a conviction that 
he could be more useful in Virginia than in Dela- 
ware. President F. W. Boatwright, of Richmond 
College, cordially declared that the call given to 
Doctor Mitchell was ''hearty and unanimous." 

In speaking of the transfer from Delaware Col- 
lege to his old field of work. Doctor Mitchell ex- 
pressed his preference for teaching to the cares of 
an executive and administrative post. He sooke 
also of the embarrassments that came to his admin- 
istration at Delaware College because of the vv^orld 
war and the unnatural conditions that came with 
the technical peace. 

Members of the Faculty, and others wrote to 
Doctor Mitchell promptly upon learning of his 
resignation in a fashion that could leave him no 
doubt of their hearty good will, and their wish for 
his success in the South. In answer to one such let- 
ter Doctor Mitchell wrote to say that he felt sure 
that the right man would be found to succeed him, 
bespeaking for his successor a loyal support, and 
prophesying the rapid development of Delaware 
College in accordance with plans already laid out. 
"I desire to thank you," he wrote, ''for your kind 
note of yesterday, which seems to me to state 
sanely the facts of the whole situation in the true 
spirit of friendship and devotion to the cause of 
education as a national task. I account it a privi- 
lege to have had these six years in Delaware, and 
the experience will only strengthen me for work in 
the South." 



110 



In accepting Doctor Mitchell's resignation on 
April lo, 1920, the Board of Trustees adopted a 
resolution of regret, cordially expressing apprecia- 
tion of his work, especially in reorganizing the 
finances, in the promotion and organization of stu- 
dent government, in the establishment of the Sum- 
mer School, and in the closer linking of the College 
with the public schools through the system of 
teacher training. The Executive Committee was 
authorized to consider candidates for the vacant 
presidency. 



Past, Present and Future 

Our Alma Mater of today is best seen and appre- 
ciated in comparison with its earlier self. As to 
income, buildings, libraries and physical equipment, 
it has grown from one of the smallest and feeblest 
of the many small and feeble American colleges of 
fifty years ago to a position of well-recognized 
importance among the State colleges, with the prom- 
ise of a future in which it will take its place as an 
institution of distinctive character, not merely by 
reason of the ripened beauty of grounds and build- 
ings, but also by reason of the special opportunities 
it will offer to students in its several departments of 
study, and likewise by its academic atmosphere. The 
growth of the Faculty and of the student body has 
kept pace with the physical development of the Col- 
lege, and the Board of Trustees has been reorgan- 
ized within the past few years for far greater 
efficiency. 

As the author of this sketch has known the Col- 
lege somewhat intimately at three periods — that 
immediately after the resuscitation, when he was an 
undergraduate; that beginning a quarter of a cen- 
tury later, when he was for six years a member of 

111 



the Faculty, and again within the past three years, 
when he was a frequent visitor for many weeks at 
a time — he may perhaps be qualified to speak as to 
the progress for the past half century. While the 
growth in the number of the student body has more 
than sextupled the little group of 1870, the improve- 
ment in maturity of mind and scholarly preparation 
has also been marked, not only in the period between 
1870 and 1896, but as well in that between 1896 
and the present time. Hardly a single student was 
properly prepared for college in 1870, for at that 
time few schools in Delaware, public or private, 
were equipped to give students such preparation. 
By 1896 students came better prepared because the 
schools had much improved. They were riper if not 
older on the average in 1896 than in 1870, just as 
they are probably older and somewhat riper in 1920 
than they were in 1896, and certainly better prepared 
by reason of stiffened entrance requirements made 
possible by further improvement of the schools. 
One significant and wholesome sign of the times 
is the increased use of the library as a student lab- 
oratory, and the author cheerfully and cordially 
recognizes that the English Department, which is 
in part responsible for this development, seems to 
be accomplishing far more than he was able to 
accomplish as the sole professor in that department. 
He would like, if he dared, to lay the flattering 
unction to his soul, that the improvement is to be 
accounted for by a larger teaching force in the 
department and a student body better prepared to 
profit by instruction. He must own also to a humili- 
ating suspicion that all other departments for the 
administration of which he had the responsibility 
are now doing far better by students than he was 
able to do. Indeed, the flight of twenty years has 
taught him that a man lays himself open to the 
charge of presumptuous folly when he essays the 
profession of omniscience. 

112 



It is easy to read in the development of Delaware 
College for the past half century a somewhat hesi- 
tating but on the whole a continuous response to cur- 
rent dominant influences in American education, 
influences largely dependent upon an industrial and 
economic trend. Upon an old classical and cultural 
stock was grafted, in 1870, a scion of the new techni- 
cal education. Both have grown with the growth 
of the College in means and men, with its physical 
expansion and its enlarged Faculty and student 
body. Much the greater growth has been in the 
new graft, until at length it has become far more 
important than the old stock. To drop the horti- 
cultural figure of speech, Delaware College is now 
an important technical school and eventually per- 
haps to be a great technical school. This technical 
development in engineering and in agriculture, while 
thus somewhat overshadowing the classical and 
cultural school, has not destroyed it or prevented its 
development, especially in some directions. If any 
department of learning recognized as of impor- 
tance in Delaware College of the period before the 
suspension of 1859 has suffered from the extremely 
practical trend of the technical school, it has been 
that of pure science, physical, mental and moral. 
The revived College inherited from the period before 
the suspension some rare and valuable physical 
apparatus, bought by an agent especially sent abroad 
for the purpose. Among these purchases were a 
reflecting telescope of considerable power and a 
valuable transit telescope. Under Professor Daniel 
Kirkwood, who became one of the most distin- 
guished American astronomers, the heavens were 
studied from the quaint little wooden observatory 
destroyed by fire shortly after the resuscitation, and 
in Old College was undertaken a somewhat notable 
geodetic experiment by means of a long pendulum 
hung in the well of the stairway. Little of the old 
physical apparatus has been used since 1870, though 

113 



Professor Porter sometimes set up the reflecting 
telescope on fine nights in the early seventies, and 
he used the Leyden jars and the great f rictional gen- 
erator for ilkistrative purposes in some of his 
classes. The two telescopes were disposed of, one 
to buy apparatus or materials for technical uses, and 
a good deal of the equipment of the physical lab- 
oratory has been broken or become antiquated. 
Mathematical and descriptive astronomy is still ably 
taught to a few pupils, and pure science has not 
disappeared from the chemical laboratory and class- 
room, but as a school of pure science Delaware Col- 
lege hardly ranks as high among its fellows of today 
as the infant institution of the period before the 
Civil War ranked among other ante helium institu- 
tions, at least in the relative quality and quantity 
of the physical apparatus needed for instruction and 
investigation. True it is that the smaller colleges 
now largely leave to great institutions the vastly 
expensive realm of pure science. Nevertheless 
equipment even in our technical departments is 
inadequate, and pure science, physical, mental, and 
moral, finds too small a place in the curriculum. 

Delaware College, at her post as the head of Dela- 
ware's educational system, occupies relatively a far 
more important place in the life of the State than 
many a much larger school occupies in the great 
states of the Union, and she is more and more using 
her opportunity to coordinate and develop the 
schools both public and private. As a free public 
institution standing alone in this State, Delaware 
College has no place for local rivalries or local jeal- 
ousies. No other institution profits by her loss; 
loses by her gains. Her attitude is one of pure 
benevolence. While Delaware College sets the 
standards of the State in the matter of college 
entrance requirements, and the Women's College, 
with the co-operative aid of the Summer School, 
seeks to provide trained teachers for the schools, 

114 



lower and higher, pubHc and private, there is no 
intention to sacrifice the educational interests of 
those who do not seek an academic education by 
making the public school system a mere feeder to the 
two colleges. College entrance requirements in the 
past have done great harm to the preparatory 
schools the whole country over by forcing them to 
become not so much homes of sound education as 
mills to grind out academic matriculates. Standard- 
ization has its perils as well as its economies, con- 
veniences and other advantages. Delaware Col- 
lege and the Women's College are fortunate in that 
they draw most of their pupils from their own 
natural jurisdiction, and are able to emphasize, vary, 
restrict and expand the established entrance require- 
ments in accordance with local needs and local pos- 
sibilities. In spite of the deficiencies of the public 
school system and the scarcity of private prepara- 
tory schools, the entrance requirements have been 
steadily raised for the past twenty-five years, and 
the efTectiveness of college instruction has corre- 
spondingly increased. 

Delaware is now closely approaching the time 
when the value of Delaware College and the 
Women's College is to be more and more strongly 
felt throughout the whole State. The annually 
larger graduating classes from the two institutions 
will soon show a cumulative influence in the life of 
the State. Many graduates of Delaware College 
and not a few of the Women's College leave Dela- 
ware to find employment, but with the growth of 
population and business Delaw are will retain for her 
own uses more and more of her academic sons and 
daughters, and recall some who have found occupa- 
tions and homes elsewhere. Natives of the small 
states are apt to have a peculiar affection for the 
home of their birth, and if it is proverbially difificult 
for the stranger to become a New Englander, it is 

115 



perhaps even harder for a native of this little com- 
monwealth to leave off being a Delawarean. For- 
tunately we do not begin loving our neighbors by 
haling those of our own family, and so the Dela- 
warean's characteristic fondness for this area of 
less than 2500 square miles does not in the least take 
from his larger patriotism. One may be a loyal 
Delawarean, and even extravagantly proud of his 
native State, as Delawareans often seem to the citi- 
zens of greater commonwealths, yet as sound an 
American as the son or daughter of New York, 
Massachusetts, Texas or Illinois. The Delawar- 
ean's feeling that he is almost like a member of a 
very large family will extend and intensify through- 
out the State the influence of our Alumni, and per- 
haps especially of the Alumnae of the Women's 
College. 

Delaware College, fifty years after awakening 
from her sleep of 1859 to 1870, and only a little 
more than a decade from the end of her first cen- 
tury, finds her oft-challenged right to survive fully 
vindicated, her Alumni filling places of honor and 
usefulness not only in the State and nation, but in 
the world at large, herself at last strongly intrenched 
in the respect and affections of all Delawareans, and 
handsomely regarded by her fellow-institutions, 
small and great. There have been times in that hard 
half century when her days seemed almost definitely 
numbered, her end close at hand. Now happily her 
future is well assured. Delaware College, the 
affiliated Women's College of Delaware, and the 
Delaware College Agricultural Experiment Station, 
as now merged in the Department of Agriculture, 
make up a closely related institutional whole, under 
a single Board of Trustees, with a single titular 
head, a whole distinguished for the great free- 
dom of its parts, yet essentially one in its aim and 
in the thoughts and affections of the community 

116 



that each and all eagerly seek to serve. Both col- 
leges, as drawing students from all parts of Dela- 
ware, have steadily helped to make friends for the 
Department of Agriculture, while that department, 
through its benevolent usefulness, has brought itself 
and helped to bring both colleges home to the lone- 
liest farmstead in the State. In a short existence 
of six years, during much of which period the minds 
of all were intensely preoccupied by the World War, 
the Women's College has far more than fulfilled the 
hopes of its most sanguine friends, and proved to 
the coldest sceptic that it answers to a vital need 
of the State, while in those fateful years, Delavv^are 
College, although interrupted in a development that 
hardly the most ardent friend had dared anticipate, 
answered with prompt alacrity to both the educa- 
tional needs of the State and the military demands 
of the nation, as did the W^omen's College. With 
the war well behind us and the interrupted plan of 
development hopefully resumed, Delaware College 
stands, as never before, definitely and unquestion- 
ably not only as the official head of the State's edu- 
cational system, but as its chief organ of a broad 
and comprehensive culture. 

Between the Faculties and the students of the 
twin colleges, the expert force of the Department 
of Agriculture, and the varied personnel ministering 
to the triple institution, Newark now has an aca- 
demic population of more than 600. What this 
academic population may have grown to by the time 
Delaware College has closed her first century thir- 
teen years hence it might be easy to estimate with 
near probability. What may be the academic popu- 
lation of the more distant future it would be harder 
to calculate, but unless something unforeseen inter- 
rupts the progress now promised, the little village of 
1870 will have become before the middle of the 
present century an educational center of real impor- 

117 



tance and high usefulness. Wihiiington, as a grow- 
ing city, will naturally send a larger and larger 
contingent to both colleges, while the developing 
argricultural interests of the State will demand a 
constant expansion of the Agricultural Depart- 
ment's helpful activities, and an enlargement of its 
force. At the same time our rural population and 
wealth must grow with improved agriculture, and 
from the farms and villages of New Castle, Kent 
and Sussex will come more and more young men and 
women seeking w^hat Delaware College has to offer. 
Hand in hand with such growth and increasing use- 
fulness should go an ever-broadening democracy of 
relation to the whole community, and it is quite pos- 
sible that Delaware College of the future may equip 
herself so as to offer special opportunities for techni- 
cal and other education to mechanics of mature 
years who shall meanwhile give the larger part of 
their time to earning their bread in their usual 
occupations. The possibilities of usefulness for 
Delaware College, the Women's College and as well 
the Department of Agriculture are, indeed, past 
prophesying. 

A cumulative influence for the development of 
Delaware College lies in the annually growing num 
ber of the Alumni. Since the resuscitation the Col- 
lege has graduated almost exactly 750 students, and 
the whole number of graduates since the founding 
of the College has been approximately 875. If to 
this number be added the graduates of the Women's 
College, the whole number of graduates for the 
twun colleges will be found to number about 1000. 
Few remain of the graduates before the resuscita- 
tion, but it is safe to estimate that of the 1000 at 
least 700 are living. It should be remembered also 
that in addition to the 1000 graduates at least 2500 
other students had attended for periods ranging 
from less than a year to the full four years, and of 

118 






the whole 35C)0 who have thus attended the two 
colleges, probably more than 2500 are now living. 

The academic year of 1819-20 shows the largest 
enrollment of students in the whole history of Dela- 
ware College. With a Freshman class of 125, far 
larger than any previous entrance class, the whole 
student body numbered 298, and the combined stu- 
dent body of the two colleges reached 430. The 
indications are that the student body of Delaware 
College will soon exceed 500, unless growth is 
checked by the lack of buildings and instructors, 
and a rapid growth of the Women's College seems 
equally assured. 

In our satisfaction with present and prospective 
material growth, we must not forget that this educa- 
tional center of Delaware should afford to the people 
of the State things even more important than such 
as can be seen and handled, weighed and measured 
by the scales and the yardstick of the physical 
senses. Why have we preserved, at great expense, 
and as we hope to an indefinitely distant future, our 
serenely beautiful Old College? Because we believe 
that intangible thing tradition — the link with our 
earliest academic past — well worth its cost. Why 
have we, in planning for Delaware College of the 
future, and for the Women's College, provided for 
architecturally beautiful and costly buildings to be 
set amid lawns, and groves, and trees that we hope 
may grow to monumental dignity of height and 
spread, when classes might have been conducted and 
the studies of pupils and teachers pursued in squalid 
barracks surrounded by slovenly deserts? Because 
we believe that natural and architectural beauty is 
an incalculably soothing and ennobling influence in 
the lives of young men and women; that learning 
and culture are worthy of lovely and dignified sur- 
roundings. No part then of the potentially great 
educational influence centered at Newark is to exist 

119 



solely for material purposes. The Department of 
Agriculture, in teaching us how to grow two blades 
of grass where before grew but one ; in showing us 
the most economical and effective method of dealing 
with crops and stock; in studying the aptitude of 
soils and the opportunities of markets, should and 
will also help to improve the moral, intellectual and 
aesthetic conditions of rural life; must and will stim- 
ulate a wholesome taste in the beautifying of the 
farm, which we should never forget is also the 
home ; should and will furnish not merely practical 
ideas, but as well ennobling ideals. Furthermore, 
no mere material development, whether expressed 
in territorial expansion or in buildings, costly, con- 
venient, beautiful, can make a college beneficently 
great ; for it is not by the outward and visible signs, 
but by the inward and spiritual grace that we 
properly measure academic greatness. Naturally, 
therefore, we must realize that these two colleges 
are and are always to be more than mere educational 
mills, more than purveyors of dollar-earning educa- 
tion, however important and effective they may be 
and should be in that aspect, but as well a center 
from which shall radiate noble influences such as 
make for a civilization of the highest type: for a 
genuine democracy, broad-based upon essential jus- 
tice, not marked by an extravagant luxury con- 
trasted with an embittered squalor, unenlightened 
by knowledge and unadorned by taste ; for the oft- 
dreamed but never yet attained community of well 
ordered contentment, leavened throughout with a 
rich and enduring culture. 



120 



Appendix 



Appendix 

IN ORDER that the general narrative should not be 
clogged with dry details, statistics and the like, many- 
such matters of significance in the record of the past 
half century have been excluded from the body of this 
work and placed in the appendix. The necrology here 
given affords fitting place for special mention of the names 
and deeds of some among the alumni who have attained dis- 
tinction, public or professional, or proved themselves espe- 
cially useful to the State or to their Alma Mater or both. 
The author has purposely refrained from proclaiming the 
name and fame of conspicuous alumni who still live, since in 
doing so he might seem to make invidious distinctions. 



Before the Resuscitation 

As the body of this little work is concerned with the 
history of Delaware College since 1870, the author has made 
only casual reference to the period before the resuscitation, 
but it seems right to place here a brief sketch of the origin 
and history of Delaware College before the temporary clos- 
ing of its doors in the spring of 1859. What follows on this 
subject is largely drawn from "The History of Education 
in Delaware," written by Lyman P. Powell, A. B., and pub- 
lished by the Government Printing Office at Washington as 
No. 15 in the series of ''Contributions to American Educa- 
tional History," edited by the late Dr. Herbert B. Adams, 
of Johns Hopkins University, and issued in 1893 by the 
Federal Bureau of Education as "Circular of Information 
No. 3" of that year. 

Newark Academy, an endowed preparatory school 
strongly under Presbyterian influence, established in 1767, 
is in some sort the direct ancestor of Delaware College, so 
that we might, perhaps, have celebrated three years ago our 
sesqui-centennial. After some years of agitation the 
Trustees of the Academy obtained in 1818 by act of the 



Delaware Legislature authority to raise by lottery $50,000 
for the founding of a college at Newark. Certain taxes 
were assigned in aid of the project by legislative act three 
years later, and in 1835 the College, by that time opened, 
was authorized to raise $100,000 by lottery, half of which 
sum was to go to the aid of schools and to other public 
purposes. 

The charter for "Newark College," as the institution was 
called until 1843, was granted by act of Legislature Febru- 
ary 5, 1833, and the building of Old College was soon after 
begun. May 8, 1834, the College was formally opened with 
inaugural ceremonies. Newark Academy was now merged 
in the College, which treated the Academy as its preparatory 
department. As a matter of fact the College opened with 
but one student in its "collegiate department," Alexander T. 
Gray, father of United States Judge George Gray, a Sopho- 
more, who was in the lamentable position of having not a 
single Freshman to haze. There were sixty-three students 
in the "academic department," of whom forty-two were 
boarders. This union of the College and the Academy 
continued until 1869, when the grounds and buildings of the 
Academy were re-granted to the Trustees of that insti- 
tution. 

Thus Delaware College has some claim to trace its his- 
tory back to 1767,* the date at which an academy, under 
Presbyterian auspices, at New London, Pennsylvania, was 
transferred to Newark by the Principal, the Rev. Alexander 
McDowell, pastor of White Clay Creek and Elk River 
Presbyterian Churches, The academy was for a short time 
situated at Elkton. It is worth noting that the academy at 
New London was founded by the Rev. Francis Alison, an 
Irish Presbyterian clergyman and scholar of distinction in 
early American education. He removed to Philadelphia in 
1752, to become master of the grammar school, which soon 
after was erected into the University of Pennsylvania. 

When the College opened its doors in the Spring of 
1834, it was without a president, and only two of its three 
chosen professors were on duty. The college year then, and 
until 1845, was divided into two terms, one beginning the 
first Wednesday in November and continuing until the third 
Wednesday in April, the other beginning after a five weeks 
vacation and continuing until the third Wednesday of Sep- 
tember, when commencement was held. The first com- 



*The Academy was chartered by the Penns, in 1769, and the date 
of its founding came to be confused with that of the charter. 

124 



mencement occurred in September of 1836, when there were 
four graduates. 

The Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Wheeler Gilbert, first President 
of the College, was elected October 29, 1834, but he resigned 
office June 8, 1835, because he would not administer an 
institution that was collecting its funds by means of a lottery. 
He was recalled to the presidency in May, 1841, and he held 
office until April, 1847, when he resigned his post to become 
pastor of a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, leaving, 
however, upon the College the stamp of his fine personality. 
There were seven other presidents before the suspension of 
1859: The Rev. Richard Sharp Mason, of the Episcopal 
Church, 1835-1840; the Rev. James P. Wilson, D. D., 1847- 
1850; William Augustus Norton, for a few months, 1850; 
the Rev. Matthew Meigs, 1 850-1 851 ; the Rev. Walter S. F. 
Graham, 1851-1854; Dr. Daniel Kirkwood, the eminent 
astronomer, 1854-1856, and the Rev. E. J. Newlin, 1856- 
1859. 

Under President Graham the enrollment in the collegiate 
department rose to 90, that in the academic department to 
95, and under Dr. Kirkwood the collegiate enrollment 
reached 87, the academic 122. Several of the presidents 
left the college to accept the presidency of notable institu- 
tions, and the Faculty always included men of more than 
common scholarship. The College, however, was in con- 
stant need of money, and it finally had recourse to a fatally 
false financial system, that of selling scholarships in an 
attempt to anticipate income. Tuition in early days was but 
$10 a term, lodging but $2.50 a term, board but $1.25 a 
week, so that it is said that an economical student could get 
through college on a trifle over $100 a year. Other finan- 
cial matters were in accord with these terms. President 
Kirkwood, already a well-recognized writer upon astronomy, 
had a salary of $1200 a year in 1854-6, when the College was 
near its highest record in students, and the academic depart- 
ment at its very highest, the professor of English received 
$600 a year, and other professors each $800 a year. Money 
then, however, had a far greater purchasing power than 
now. 

During President Newlin's term the accumulated mistakes 
of the past, and especially the ruinous policy of selling 
scholarships, wrought their perfect work, and a tragic 
occurrence on March 30, 1858, gave the finishing stroke to 
the College. It closed its doors exactly a year later, 
March 30, 1859, to remain closed for the next eleven years, 

125 



while George G. Evans, the faithful treasurer, jealously 
watched over the building and grounds, and while the trees 
of the campus, planted a quarter of a century before, 
patiently grew and ripened in the rains and suns of all those 
silent summers. 



Necrology 

This record of the lost alumni appropriately opens with 
the list of our dead in the World War. They numbered 
eight, as follows: 

Rupert Mandell Burstan, cx-1914, Major, U. S. 
Marines. In command of a force of iioo fighting 
marines. Died of pneumonia in a hospital in France, 
September 19, 1918. 

Mark Donald Dare, ex-1920, Second Lieutenant, 
Infantry. Died of pneumonia at Camp Grant, Illinois, 
December 8, 19 18. 

Dr. John Lee Fisher, ex-1911. Lieutenant, Medical 
Corps, U. S. N. R. Died of influenza and pneumonia in 
Chelsea Naval Hospital, Boston, September 24, 1918. 

Alfred Rickert Hamel, ex-1914. Captain, Twenty-sixth 
Infantry, A. E. F. Killed in action near Soissons, France, 
July 18, 1918. 

Michael M. Hershman, ex-1920, Sergeant, 307th 
Machine Gun Company, A. E. F. Killed in action Sep- 
tember 28, 1918. 

Samuel Taylor Lambert, ex-1920. Captain of a gun 
crew on U. S. S. Orizaba. Accidentally killed by the 
premature explosion of a depth bomb on August 17, 1918. 

James Allison O'Daniel, ex-1918. First Lieutenant, 
Aviation. Killed in an airplane accident while observing 
German artillery fire at Camp Coetquidan, France, July 
27, 1918. 

Lawrence Raymond Witsil, ex-1918, Corporal, 154th 
Depot Brigade, Camp Meade, Maryland. Died of influ- 
enza and pneumonia at Camp Meade, Maryland, Octo- 
ber 4, 1918. 

j» jfc ^ 



126 



Dr. George William Marshall (1874) was born at Mil- 
ford, Delaware, in 1855, the son of Dr. William Marshall. 
He entered college in the year of the resuscitation, and was 
active in undergraduate affairs, especially in those of the 
Athenaean Society. He took the degree of B. A. in 1874, 
and that of M. D. at Jefferson Medical College, Philadel- 
phia, two years later. Returning to Milford, he Practised 
as his father's partner and later alone. He married Miss 
Mary Donnel, of Newark. Dr. Marshall was active in local 
and state politics for some years as a Republican, servmg 
in the Legislature and as Insurance Commissioner. He was 
Ion? one of the most zealous and interested members of the 
Board of Trustees of Delaware College. Thousands of 
Delawareans recall Dr. Marshall as a huge man, tall in 
stature and of great bulk, with a wooingly soft voice and a 
ready smile. As a militia officer riding with the Delaware 
troops at the head of the line, he was one of the most 
marked figures of the parade in New York upon the occa- 
sion of the ''Constitutional Centennial" of April 30, 1889. 
Dr Marshall's strength lay in his natively quick sympathies, 
in an almost boyish humor, and in an instinctive understand- 
ing of every-day human beings. Like nearly all country 
physicians of large practice, he did a vast deal of hard work 
without pay, and countless deeds of kindness of which the 
world knew naught. He died April 18, 191 5» survived by 
Mrs. Marshall, two sons and a daughter. 

WilHam Richardson Martin (1874) came to Newark from 
Snow Hill, Maryland, at the resuscitation of the College, a 
youth of sixteen, and died fifty years later as a judge of the 
First Maryland Judicial District. As he was a nephew ot 
President Purnell's wife, he boarded at the house of Dr. Pur- 
nell, where were also lodged two other students from Snow 
Hill. Billy Martin, as everybody called him, was a vigorous 
and aggressive fellow of immense good nature and active 
mind. As a member of the Delta Phi Society he was a 
highly skilled canvasser for new members among the Fresh- 
men. He took his B.A. in 1874, and his A.M. incursu. 
After being admitted to the bar, he set up his office at 
Easton, Talbot County, and soon built up a good practice. 
While still a young man he was called to the bench, where 
he made a reputation for judicial fairness and conscientious 
devotion to duty. The native humor that helped to make 
him a good comrade in undergraduate days did not desert 
him on the bench, and his humor stood the final test in that 
he could laugh when the joke was at his own expense. 
Judge Martin was fond of telling the story of a deal m 

127 



horseflesh with a colored man, in which transaction the 
Judge himself was worsted. He had a natural fondness 
for horses, and learning that a negro farmer had a good 
mare for sale, he went out to view the beast. She proved 
worthy of the report that had been brought of her, but 
Judge Martin thought the price too high, so he went home 
without buying the horse. The more he thought about that 
mare, however, the more he wanted her, and at last he went 
again, this time intending to take the mare at the negro's 
original price, only to find that the price had gone up. 
Nothing could move the negro, so the Judge drove home 
disappointed. He made a third visit to the negro, to find 
that the price of the mare had again risen, and again he 
went home disappointed. Waiting a suitable time, the Judge 
went once more, and again the price of the mare had 
advanced. By this time the Judge knew he must have that 
mare, and not knowing to what price the negro might 
advance, he bought her then and there at something like 
50 per cent, beyond the original demand. Judge Martin's 
death came when he was really in his prime. He left a 
widow and two children. 

Lewis P. Bush, ex- 1874, although he attended Delaware 
College but a single year, is remembered with warm regard 
and sincere respect by his academic contemporaries. Mr. 
Bush was born at Wilmington, March 28, 1853, and named 
for his uncle. Dr. Lewis Potter Bush, an eminent physician, 
long an active member of the College Board of Trustees. 
On leaving College, in 1871, Mr. Bush went into the mo- 
rocco business at Wilmington with his uncle, William Bush, 
to leave it twenty years later and join his father and 
brothers in the firm of George W. Bush & Sons. Of 
this company he became President and he continued at 
the head of it until his death, November 17, 1914. The 
qualities of industry, judgment, and sincerity that made 
so strong an impression upon Mr. Bush's comrades at 
College stood him in good stead through his more than 
forty years of active business life. He served for the 
latter part of his life as a member of the College Board 
of Trustees, and was once President of the Alumni Asso- 
ciation. He was one of the most active and useful mem- 
bers of the Board. At Wilmington he was usefully active 
in connection with the affairs of the Delaware Hospital 
and the Institute Free Library. His eldest son (Delaware 
College, 1903) was the first Rhodes scholar at Oxford 
from Delaware. 



128 



Frederick William Curtis (A. B., 1875) was the son of 
Frederick and Harriet L. Curtis, both of whom were born 
at Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, now a suburb of 
Boston, where the families of both were engaged in paper - 
making. Frederick A. Curtis and his brothers long owned 
and administered Nonantum Mills, a paper mill on the 
White Clay Creek near Newark. The son was born at 
Newark, March 23, 1858. He died at Wilmington, March 
4, 191 1. He was prepared for College at Newark Academy, 
when it was under the principalship of Professor E. D. 
Porter. After his graduation at Delaware College he took 
up the traditional occupation of his ancestors on both sides, 
and became a papermaker. In 1887 he and his elder half 
brother Alfred A. Curtis acquired Nonantum Mills and 
continued to operate the property under the honored firm 
name of Curtis & Brothers. For nearly a century paper 
has been made at this mill, originally under the ownership 
of the Matiers, a French Huguenot family, after about 1848 
by the men of the Curtis family for three generations. Wil- 
liam F. Curtis was positive, aggressive, courageous, upright, 
diligent in business, public spirited, kindly in his affections, 
and charitable without ostentation. From 1897 until his 
death he served the College faithfully and efficiently as a 
trustee, being especially interested and active in the depart- 
ment of mechanical engineering. On June 17, 1897, he 
married Sara Corbit, daughter of Daniel W. Corbit, of 
Odessa, a trustee of Delaware College. He was survived by 
Mrs. Curtis and four children. 

William Janvier Ferris (1876) was said by Dr. Purnell 
to be the best prepared man to enter college in the first two 
years after the resuscitation. That was far from over- 
praising "Ferris," as all men called him, for he had a 
remarkable mind and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. To 
his contemporaries of undergraduate days he seemed to 
learn as if by magic. As a resident of New Castle, his 
birthplace, he had perhaps as great a variety of occupations 
as any man in Delaware. He inherited a drug store from 
his father. Dr. Charles Ferris, who was at one time Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry in Delaware College, and undertook in 
addition banking, the management of building and loan 
associations, and a variety of other avocations. His amuse- 
ments were the study of languages, among them Hebrew 
and Sanskrit, and the game of chess. He was, indeed, one 
of the ablest American amateur chess players, and he played 
correspondence games not only with amateurs in this 
country, but with some in Europe. Mr. Ferris died after 
a severe surgical operation in the summer of 1918. His 

129 



only child is Ensign Ferris, U. S. N., who greatly distin- 
guished himself at the Naval Academy, standing fifth at 
graduation in a class (that of 1918) of about 400 students. 

Lewis Cass Vandegrift (1876), son of Leonard George 
Vandegrift, is remembered with affection and admiration 
by his undergraduate fellows, and his contemporaries of 
later days. He studied law in the office of the Honorable 
George Gray, now retired Federal Circuit Court of Appeals 
Judge, and took his degree in law at the Harvard Law 
School in 1880. Soon after graduation he set up a law office 
at No. I West loth Street, Wilmington, on part of the site 
now covered by the Hotel du Pont, where he, Charles M. 
Curtis, now Chancellor of Delaware, and the present chron- 
icler kept house with a frugality that would have met the 
approval of Mr. Hoover. It may serve to the curious as 
an index of Wilmington's growth since the early eighties 
of the last century to know that the rental of the whole 
house occupied by the trio was $144 a year. Vandegrift 
was shortly invited to join Edward G. Bradford, now re- 
tired Federal District Judge, in a law partnership which 
lasted until Mr. Bradford was called to the bench, when 
Vandegrift formed a partnership with his friend Charles 
M. Curtis. In 1882 Mr. Vandegrift married Rachel M. G. 
Garrett, a woman of rare quality, daughter of Eli Garrett, 
of the Edge Moor Iron Company. In the second adminis- 
tration of Grover Cleveland, Mr. Vandegrift was appointed 
United States District Attorney for the District of Dela- 
ware, a post which he was asked to hold for some time after 
the next Republican administration came into power. He 
prosecuted some extremely important cases for the Govern- 
ment, and won great credit in office. Vandergrift not only 
steadily advanced in his profession, but progressively broad- 
ened in his views of life and duty^ until he won recognition 
as an active force for good in his own city and throughout 
the State. As a trustee of Delaware College he took a warm 
interest in all its affairs. Death came to him suddenly when 
he seemed convalescent from a serious illness in the summer 
of 1900, at the age of forty-five. He was survived by Mrs. 
Vandegrift, four daughters and one son. The whole State 
realized that in his death the community had suffered a loss 
of unusual significance. Let one who knew him intimately 
and loved him well from boyhood to the end here testify 
to his force of intellect and will, his industry, his courage, 
his practical wisdom, his ever-broadening and intensifying 
warmth of human sympathy, his many unheralded charities, 
his steadily increasing zeal for all good things and right 
causes. 

130 



I 



Stansbury J. Willey appears in the published Hst of alumni 
as of the year 1877, in which year, although he had never 
been in residence at Delaware College, the honorary degree 
of Ph. B. was conferred upon him in recognition of his 
services to education in Delaware. Although he was a na- 
tive of Sussex County, most of his youth he passed at 
Newark. After a preparatory education in the local public 
schools and at Newark Academy, he took special courses 
elsewhere to fit him for teaching. He taught for a time in 
the rural public schools of New Castle County, became 
assistant in Professor Reynold's private academy at Wil- 
mington, a school of excellent repute, and eventually en- 
tered the public school system of Wilmington. He became 
head of the High School, later was a member of the Board 
of Education, and was elected for a two-year term as Mayor 
of Wilmington, as the nominee of the Republican party. 
He afterward helped establish an important manufacturing 
concern at Wilmington, but retired from it some years be- 
fore his death, in 1908, at the age of about sixty. Mr. Willey 
was a man of more than common powers, of great industry, 
and of marked usefulness in his public career. 

Harlow Hurd Curtis was born at Newark, March 3, 1867, 
had his preparatory education at Newark Academy, and 
entered Delaware College in due course, but was not gradu- 
ated. He early took to journalism, serving Every Evening 
of Wilmington, the New York Evening Post, the Philadel- 
phia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Public Ledger, mostly as 
editor of telegraphic news. After a brief illness, he died of 
pneumonia on January 20, 1917. While he received the 
foundation of his education at Newark Academy and Dela- 
ware College, he was really in essentials self-educated, 
through his reactions to contact with the world, through 
reading the best literature, until he acquired a fastidious 
taste for the choicest things not only in books, but in all 
art and in life. As a journalist he kept the freedom of his 
intellectual and spiritual life, and the editorial office in 
which he worked was always the better for his presence, 
for his alert moral courage in being steadily true to his 
convictions. Shortly before his death he became editor of 
the Alumni News, but lived to issue only a single number, 
one highly creditable to his editorial taste and skill. As a 
humanitarian he protected dumb animals, and was for years 
an active agent of the S. P. C. A. He served the town of 
Newark usefully as a promoter of public and private sani- 
tation. He served also the Church to which he belonged 
and his religious convictions, touched with a sincere though 

131 



seldom avowed mysticism as steadfast and profound as any 
belief that could possibly come of rigid reasoning, were 
really the foundation of his character. Few men have had 
more or more devoted friends. At his death a rare and 
ever-refining spirit sped from earth, leaving behind a sin- 
gularly gracious and fragrant memory. 

Albert H. Raub, Ph. D. (1892), son of Dr. Albert N. 
Raub, former President of Delaware College, and born at 
Lock Haven, Pa., in 1869, died at his home, 2035 Chestnut 
Street, Philadelphia, January 4, 1919. Dr. Raub passed 
his youth at Newark, and after his graduation at Delaware 
College, with the degree of B. A., he became principal of 
the Newark Public Schools. Thence he went to teach in 
the Disston School at Tacony, a suburb of Philadelphia, 
and was promoted to the public school system of the city 
until he became associate superintendent in charge of spe- 
cial classes, compulsory attendance and medical inspection. 
Dr. Raub became a well-recognized specialist in the Gary 
school system, and was particularly interested in the edu- 
cation of the foreign born. His promotion was rapid in the 
school system of Philadelphia, and his career was one of 
distinguished usefulness. Death came when his powers \vere 
still active, and when he seemed likely to afford the city 
many more years of effective service. 

Joseph Heckart Frazer (1903) was born at Port Deposit, 
Md., September 30, 1882, the son of Eben B. and Helen 
Heckart Frazer. His parents removed to Newark, and he 
Vx-as prepared for college at Newark Academy and the local 
public schools, and was graduated in due course at Dela- 
ware College with the degree of B. C. E. When the Boliv- 
ian Government asked in 1904 for a railway engineer to 
make surveys for public railways. Division Engineer William 
Sisson, under whom Mr. Frazer had served in surveys of 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and who was sent in re- 
sponse to the Bolivian call, took with him his young subor- 
dinate. The corps was disbanded shortly after reaching 
Bolivia because of Mr. Sisson's illness, and all but Mr. 
Frazer returned home. He found work with a local mining 
company, and later formed a partnership in mining engi- 
neering. Within the next six years he and his partner sur- 
veyed and built fifty-five miles of railway at great altitudes, 
and they were so successful that the firm became one of the 
best known in Bolivia. The first important contract of the 
firm was barely finished when Mr. Frazer died, August 9, 
191 1, from a severe cold. Although only at the beginning of 
what seemed to promise a brilliant career, Mr. Frazer left 

132 



a considerable fortune, and his family, as detailed else- 
where, gave as a memorial to the son and brother Frazer 
Field as an athletic ground to Delaware College. Joseph 
Frazer, who died when just short of 29, and only eight years 
after graduation, is remembered by his teachers and com- 
rades as a singularly frank, amiable and energetic young 
man, with a disarming humor. and a generous loyalty to his 
friends, his family and his Alma Mater. 

Emery Marvel, M. D., ex-1894, whose highly successful 
career as a surgeon was cut short by his death in January, 
1920, entered college in 1890, but at the close of his Sopho- 
more year left Delaware to begin his medical course at 
the University of Pennsylvania. He took his degree of 
M. D. in 1896, and soon after established himself in prac- 
tice at Atlantic City. There he set up a private hospital, 
and gave himself with great success to surgery, in which 
he made a national reputation. He was a leader in city of 
his choice not only as a professional man, but in public 
affairs. As a native Delawarean he did not permit his 
civic and professional career outside of Delaware to lessen 
his loyalty to the State or to Delaware College. His funeral, 
on January lOth, was attended by a thousand persons. 



The Agricultural Department 

Among the homely but significant activities of the Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station are those concerned with live- 
stock at the College Farm and the organization of clubs 
for the promotion of various agricultural interests among 
the girls and boys of Delaware. A Holstein cow at the farm 
produced more than ten tons of milk in a year, and here 
was bred the Guernsey heifer ranking first in her class and 
breed as a milk producer. One of the herd bulls attracted 
wide attention as yielding milk, and another was notable as 
selling for $7,000. The White Leghorn hen, humorously 
named "Lady Eglantine," distinguished herself in a public 
contest by laying 314 eggs in 365 consecutive days. Was 
Lady Eglantine a Sabbatarian? The Farm also bred a pig 
that sold for $1,600, the highest priced living creature of 
his kind at that time. 

Boys' and girls' clubs, organized in various parts of the 
State and carefully directed and encouraged by club leaders, 
have greatly interested young folks on the farms in growing 
pigs, calves and chickens, in making bread, in sewing, in 
canning and in growing corn. All of these undertakings 

183 



are conducted with the most detailed and scrupulous care 
as to cost and results, so that the young people thus have 
practical lessons in farm economy. These clubs have been 
among the most satisfactory undertakings of the county 
agents and home demonstrators sent out by the Experiment 
Station. 

The original staff of the Experiment Station consisted 
of Arthur T. Neale, Director ; Frederick D. Chester, Bacte- 
riology ; Milton H. Beckwith, Horticulture and Entomology ; 
George A. Harter, Meteorology; Charles L. Penny, Chem- 
istry. For some years Professor Chester was a volunteer 
and unpaid officer of the State Health Department, in which 
capacity he rendered valuable service. 

' Engineering 

With the view to further development of the Department 
of Engineering, a special committee upon the subject has 
been appointed by the Board of Trustees. Henry B. Thomp- 
son, President of the board, heads the committee, and with 
him are associated John E. Greiner (1880), consulting engi- 
neer, of Baltimore; Colonel Eugene Reybold (1902), U. S. 
A. ; Dean A. R. Cullimore, of the Department of Engineer- 
ing, and President Mitchell. Professor S. F. Conner (1902), 
■of the Department of Engineering, Tufts College, Massa- 
chusetts, has indicated a warm interest in the development 
of engineering studies at Delaware College. About the same 
time the Engineering Society of Delaware College, made 
up of members of the engineering faculty and students of 
engineering, was reorganized with a view to greater activity. 

Athletic Statement, Delaware College, for 
Season 1918-1919 

Basketball. 

Delaware 29 Ursinus 27 

43 Pennsylvania Military Academy.... 13 

24 Lehigh University 26 

33 Muhlenburg 16 

48 Haverford 20 

19 Pennsylvania University 30 

35 Bucknell University 32 

51 St. John's 19 

22 Swarthmore 26 

40 Dickinson 19 

Delaware won 8, lost 3. 

134 



Baseball. 

Delaware o Georgetown University lO 

'* I Md. Agricultural College (State) .. . 5 

8 St. John's 2 

" 6 Haverford 5 

" 3 North Carolina University 2 

8 Ursinus 2 

" 9 Villanova 3 

" I Stevens Institute (5 innings, rain).. i 

" 8 Pennsylvania University 3 

" 3 Virginia Polytechnic Institute 2 

'' 6 Franklin and Marshall 3 

Delaware won 8, tied i, lost 2. 



Track. 

Delaware 59 Haverford 45 

" 24 Swarthmore 80 

" 52 Muhlenburg 52 

" 81 Franklin and Marshall 40 

Delaware at the Middle States Track Meet made fifth 
place, with 7>^ points, fourteen colleges competing. 

Delaware at Pennsylvania relay races made fourth place. 
Time, 3.36. 



Tennis. 

Delaware o Swarthmore 6 

*' 3 Haverford 3 

" 6 Johns Hopkins o 

Won 15^. Lost same. 

The victory over the University of Pennsylvania baseball 
team was won at Franklin Field Tuesday, May 27, 1919, 
and, although part of the press of Philadelphia explained 
the result as due to the absence of several good men of the 
University team, the fact is that the victory was due to 
better playing by the Delaware nine against as good a nine 
as the University ordinarily musters. 

135 



Statistics of Graduates 

Summary 

Class Graduates Class Graduates 

1873 3 1898 10 

1874 7 1899 13 

1875 12 1900 14 

1876 15 1901 18 

1877 5 1902 15 

1878 II 1903 22 

1879 9 1904 20 

1880 7 1905 25 

1881 8 1906 18 

1882 9 1907 26 

1883 4 1908 17 

1884 II 1909 19 

1885 9 1910 27 

1886 6 1911 38 

1887 4 1912 27 

1888 2 1913 21 

1889 4 1914 25 

1890 4 1915 38 

1891 6 1916 29 

1892 9 1917 22 

1893 13 1918 32 

1894 10 1919 37 

1895 14 1920 *54 

1896 12 

1897 8 Total (since resusci- 
tation) 769 

*Estimated. 



Financial Statement. 

A. G. Wilkinson, as Business Administrator, prepared 
the first detailed budget of the Delaware College, and in- 
corporated in the financial report of Delaware College 
and the Women's College of Delaware for the year ending 
June 30, 1919. The total income of Delaware College for 
the year was $300,542.10; total expenditures, $301,968.32. 
The deficit of $1,426.22 was counterbalanced by balance 
on hand of $1,432.43, so that there was an actual balance 
on hand at the close of the fiscal year of $6.21. The total 
income of the Women's College was $55,823.00; total ex- 

186 



penditures $70,469.34. A balance of $2,877.49 on hand 
July I, 1918, reduced the deficit to $11,768.85, of which 
only $1,314.46 was incurred in current expenses. The rest 
of the deficit arose from additional heating plant and furni- 
ture and equipment for Sussex Hall, the new dormitory. 
The Summer School of 191 8 showed a total income of 
$11,733.51, total expenditure of $12,088.13; a balance on 
hand from the Summer School of 191 7 exceeded the deficit 
by $118.63. The total endowment of Delaware College 
was reported at $390,996.28, and the value of the "educa- 
tional plant" at $1,064,217.00, against which were outstand- 
ing obligations of $27,300.00. The "educational plant" of 
the Women's College appeared as valued at $328,588.57, 
and total endowment and educational plant of both at $1,- 
756,501.93. The principal items of income for Delaware 
College were: From students, fees, room rent, board, $39,- 
131,59; from U. S. Government, for Student Army Train- 
ing Corps, $67,866.31, in which was included tuition, board, 
salaries, maintenance of building, supplies, and equipment; 
from endowment, $23,840.29; from Federal appropriations, 
$97,610,11; from State appropriations, $39,610.97; from 
farm sales, $32,776.45. The chief items of expenditure for 
Delaware College were: Administration, $19,128.36; in- 
struction, $79,871.87; maintenance of grounds and build- 
ings, $47,660.43; commons, $44,900.36; heating plant, $10,- 
000.00 : agricultural experiment station, extension work, and 
farm, $91,733.37. Farm sales thus considerably exceeded 
one-third the cost of maintaining the whole agricultural 
department. The commons showed an excess of receipts 
above expenses of $4,763.18, in which were included receipts 
from the S. A. T. C. for board. 



REMINISCENCES 

Alexander F. Williamson (1874), insurance adjuster and 
appraiser of Philadelphia, and a member of the class of 
1874, recalls in a letter dated August 27, 1918, some of the 
less grave and serious preoccupations of the years 1870-74. 
It must not be inferred that Mr, Williamson gave his whole 
time and thought to such matters. On the contrary, the 
author of this pamphlet hereby certifies that Williamson 
was now and then actually dectected in study and that at 
least upon more than one occasion he met the quiz of Dr. 
Wolf without flinching, and performed chemical analyses 
that seemed to have been successfully concluded without the 
aid of his unrivaled guessing powers. 

137 



Mr, Williamson recalls with a mathematical precision 
savoring of personal knowledge that fourteen students were 
suspended a fortnight, "granted a two weeks' vacation" is 
his euphemism, for attending the celebrated prize fight 
of about fifty years ago on the triangle of debatable land a 
little less than three miles west of Newark. 

Another incident of those days recalled by Mr. William- 
son was the prophesy of a SpirituaHst that the College 
would be burned down upon a certain night. Either by way 
of testing the trustworthiness of the students as military 
cadets or to quiet the fears of the ladies who then admin- 
istered the domestic department of the institution, the 
Faculty set a guard for two nights, with suitable periods 
off and on watch, in order to make sure that the prophecy 
should not be fulfilled. 

The sham duel in which James H. J. Bush figured and 
his subsequent fall from the cupola are also recalled by Mr. 
Williamson, and he suggests that the publication of certain 
scandalous and lame- footed verses composed and published 
in memory of the occasion when Squire James H. Ray's 
horse was stabled all night in one of the corridors of Old 
College, which suggestion is hereby vetoed. 

'1 enjoyed to the full," says Mr. Williamson, "every min- 
ute of my four years in college, and it is with great pleas- 
ure as I grow older that I remember those days," and to 
Mr. Williamson's "jiwahit meminisse" we oldsters all sub- 
scribe. 

Chancellor Charles M. Curtis writes: "My class was 
1877, ^"d I took my degree of A. B. before I was eighteen 
years old, which was about my sons' age on entering col- 
lege. I knew most of the members of the pioneer class of 
the rejuvenated institution — Morgan, Marshall, Bush, 
Davis, Vallandigham, Golt, Cloak, and others — and was a bit 
in awe of them. Lew Vandegrift, Bill Lynam, Joe Pyle were 
my contemporaries. 

"In my time there was only one building, no gymnasium, 
and the only sport was baseball on the sloping field to the 
north before the Baltimore and Ohio Railway was built 
through Newark between the College and White Clay Creek. 
The Library was scanty and inaccessible. There were not 
many of us, so the classes were small, and we got close 
to the teachers both mentally and physically. 

"Co-education was not a success, in my opinion. It was 
pleasant to have the young women about, but we did not 

138 



try to compete with them for marks. What I really studied 
was Latin, Greek and mathematics. Courses in chemistry 
and geology trained my powers of guessing, to the disgust 
of Dr. Wolf, who was not to be fooled by any one. I do 
not recall much benefit from courses in literature or the 
English language. Indeed, I got my English from the study 
of Latin and Greek. I delighted in reading Greek with 
Professor Jefteris, for in my Senior year I had him all to 
myself, and he relaxed his stiffness of manner, and we were 
friends. I have never regretted the years I spent in studies 
of the classic authors. 

"The chief intellectual stimulant of real practical value 
was found in the literary societies, now dead — more's the 
pity. There were then no fraternities, and the social inter- 
course and community life were largely in the two literary 
societies. Besides the opportunity for intellectual activities 
of various kinds, these societies afforded fine training in 
public speaking, debate and parliamentary law. 

"One's memory goes back to the charm of the campus with 
its fine trees, to the roosting on the stile, and loafing on the 
big steps. Looking back from things as they now are, I find 
Delaware College of my day to have been very crude, un- 
equipped and incomplete, but one could get there even then, 
as many did, a cultural foundation of sound learning that 
brought success in life. 

"No student of the earlier days should be without a sense 
of gratitude to George G. Evans, who for many years nursed 
and economically expended the pitifully inadequate income 
available for the support of the institution, and no one can 
forget his personality." 

John S. McMaster, whose affection for the Delaware 
Peninsula amounts to a passion and whose ecclesiastical 
reminiscences are perhaps unmatched among the Alumni, 
writes from his law office in Jersey City to tell of his two 
years at Delaware College, from 1877 to 1878. "Coming 
up, as I did then, a boy of 18 from the lower Eastern Shore," 
he writes, "I was most favorably impressed then, as I have 
been ever since, with the beautiful hill country north of 
Newark, through much of which I then used to walk and 
drive, and Newark was to me the first town of its size I had 
seen, built mainly on one long street or road. It was co-edu- 
cational then, and we all knew each other well, both teachers 
and scholars. I was much interested in Newark from an 
ecclesiastical standpoint. I boarded at the Academy and 
attended the College, entering as a Sophomore in the Class 

139 



of 1880. I was sleeping in a part of the old Academy where 
my first McMaster ancestor in this country, my great-grand- 
father, Rev. Samuel McMaster, had graduated as a theo- 
logical student 103 years before I came there. This old 
Academy antedated our Presbyterian Theological Seminary 
now at Princeton. The principal of the Academy then was 
the Rev. Joseph L. Polk, a native of Princess Anne, Md., 
who had christened me and afterwards married me. He 
preached at Pocomoke, my native place, for seventeen years. 
My father was his family physician during all these years, 
and I attended his church, and he also taught me at the 
High School. The third man after the above two in Newark 
in this ecclesiastical chain of great interest to me was your 
dear, sweet father, whom every one loved and whose tall 
form bore so many marks of distinction. He had married 
my parents, and he and his brother Clement were much 
beloved by my people. 

*T was made further at home along these church lines by 
my then having as two of my teachers at the College Dr. 
William H. Purnell, so long President of the College, who 
was a native of my native county, Worcester, Maryland, 
and who had had an interesting political and war career 
and whose wife came from Worcester County, Maryland, 
as did your mother, as well as the wife of Professor William 
Mackey, who was then the beloved professor of ancient 
languages. How could I help feeling at home and being 
reminded to walk aright, and how could I be other than 
attached to Newark and Delaware College and the old New- 
ark Academy when I found there this interesting circle 
of preachers, all of whom were most kind to me, and to 
whom I added as my warm friend Dr. Hugh Hamil, the 
well-known retired teacher and Hebrew scholar who had 
married the beautiful and popular Miss Russell, whose 
father had been a noted Presbyterian minister at Newark. 
Dr. Hamilton lived just across the street from the Academy 
and could often be seen sitting in front of his study in the 
yard reading his Hebrew Bible. 

"Dr. Purnell was always immaculately dressed and had 
a military bearing, and was closely followed in this respect 
by Professor Jeffries, whose plentiful black hair was always 
so well oiled as at times to plainly show the chalk dust which 
accumulated thereon in the little room in which he so inter- 
estingly taught mathematics. These were the days, too, 
when I used to delight to go now and then to White Clay 
Creek on Sunday to hear Dr. Mackey preach, and then on 
another Sunday to the Head of Christiana to hear your 

140 



beloved father preach, and then on certain other Sundays 
to go to Elkton to visit the McCulloughs and go with them 
to the Presbyterian Church there. 

"Another notable and impressive thing in Newark in my 
day (40 years ago) was the presence there of such an 
interesting and unusual group of unwedded men and maids, 
among the former of whom were the ever-popular Bill 
Russell, Alex. Lowber, the two Motheralls, and George 
Lindsey. They were a happy group of unmarried people, 
who made it pleasant for their own circle as well as for me 
and many other students. 

''I also recall the pleasurable walks we used to take to 
the top of Iron Hill, which then seemed to be as high to 
me as some of the world's most famous mountains I have 
since seen. The tradition was then popular that Iron Hill 
had been thought of as a place to locate Washington, the 
capital of our country, as among its other qualifications was 
the one that from its top you could easily see the States of 
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, and 
the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. 

'T must not forget to add that the well-known Curtis 
family gave a delicious New England flavor to Newark 
when I was there, with their paper mills and refined homes 
and the stately bearing of the two elderly brothers, one of 
whom always reminded me of Gen. R. E. Lee. Many of us 
used to enjoy visiting these paper mills ; they were the first 
such mills we had ever seen. I could write much about the 
faithfulness of Mr. George Evans as the College Treasurer, 
a post now succeeded by his equally faithful son, Charles 
Black Evans. I might say much of the family of Blacks, of 
which Mrs. George Evans was one, and of the ever hos- 
pitably open door of the Watson Evans home, now Purnell 
Hall." 

The Rev. Dr. Harvey W. Ewing, pastor of Union Metho- 
dist Church, Wilmington, writes : "I was a member of the 
class of 1884, a small but good class, the best, of course, 
most of whom have made good in life. I am grateful for 
the opportunity and inspiration which Delaware College gave 
to me. The Faculty at that time was made up mostly of 
high-grade men, thoroughly devoted to the work of teach- 
ing, and the impressions made on me by them were always 
favorable. President Purnell was always gracious and gen- 
tlemanly. Professor Mackey was thoroughgoing, and with 
slow ones patient. Professor Jefferis was keen and stimu- 
lating to the sluggish, and Professor Wolf kept the boys 
on the anxious seat lest they fail in the hard test he gave 

141 



them. There were several changes in the Faculty while I 
was there, but the later comers I did not get to know very 
well. 

''Some of my pleasant memories center about the old 
Athenaean Society, where we debated and discussed, much 
to the annoyance frequently of those living directly under 
the hall. But still those early debates,, chiefly noise, were 
not without their value to some of us, who have later on 
in life been called to discuss great questions on the plat- 
form and in the pulpit. After thirty-four years of life in 
the college of the outside w^orld, I look back to those days 
with a great deal of satisfaction and delight." 

Judge T. B. Heisel (i8S8), writing from Delaware City, 
bears like testimony with other men of that small and early 
Delaware College to its inspiring effect upon country-bred 
youth. He says : "I began my course there in September, 
1884, then a lad of fifteen years who had seldom been away 
from the village of St. Georges; and when I first saw the 
old college building, then the only building composing the 
college, I distinctly recollect that I had the feeling it would 
be a wonderful place in which to live and study. It w^as, in 
fact, to me the beginning of four glorious years. At the end 
of it I felt sure no other years of my life could hold so 
much that would be pure happiness, nor after thirty years 
have passed along can I with confidence say that I was then 
mistaken. 

"I think, aside from boyish pranks, the memory of some 
of which is still green, my impressions of the old college 
that stand out most clearly are three: 

''First, the imposing dignity and impressive diction of 
Dr. Purnell, who was President during two years of my 
course. 

"Second, the wonderful ability of dear old Dr. Harter as 
a teacher of mathematics, of which I was especially fond, 
and my utter inability to understand how a man with such 
a mathematical mind could also read understandingly Greek, 
Latin, French and German, as he so often did in our old 
dormitories in the old building the evenings of his occa- 
sional visits. To me mathematics and languages were in- 
compatible, inconsistent and all other "ins" that one may be 
able to discover and invent. 

"Third, Mrs. Wilson, who for years managed to feed to 
contentment three times a day growing boys of my age and 
older for the munificent sum of $3 per week each. We all 
thought her very much like the portraits of Martha Wash- 
ington. Certainly that celebrated lady herself could not have 

142 



been more motherly or lovable than was Mrs. Wilson, whom 
we boys all so dearly loved." 

Francis Allyn Cooch, 1893, writes under date of October 
19th, in answer to the author's request for reminiscences : 

"I entered Delaware College in 1889, the second year of 
Dr. Raub's incumbency as president. Some years previous 
there had been an attendance of but about sixteen all told, 
but the class of '93 at the outset had about fifty members 
as I recall it. Entrance examinations were unknown and 
the aim at that time was to secure as many students as 
possible regardless of qualifications. I think I was as well 
prepared as the majority of my class at that time, but know 
that it would be impossible for mc to have passed the 
present examinations. Dr. Wolfe at that time was in the 
prime of life and, as always, respected and feared by the 
entire student body almost without exception. 

"I think it was during my first year that Professor Robin- 
son became connected with Delaware College, also Lieu- 
tenant George LeRoy Brown, the first army officer detailed 
by the Government. 

"I think it was probably during my third year that steam 
heat was first installed in the building. Prior to that time 
"Poverty Row," Devil's Den," and the other delectable parts 
of the dormitory, as well as the class rooms, were heated 
by stoves and the students were compelled to carry the 
coal from the basement to the third floor themselves or 
bribe George James to do it for them. 

"In my first year football was first introduced to the 
College, and in those days matriculation was quite unneces- 
sary in order to become a member of the football team. 
In fact, I recall that on certain occasions less than half of 
the team were students of the College, which was con- 
sidered quite the regular thing and approved of or at least 
winked at by the authorities, 

"Recitation Hall was built during my four years^ attend- 
ance, as well as the first armory and gymnasium, the old 
frame building torn down some years ago and the first 
building for instruction in mechanical and electrical en- 
gineering. Also at that time the Evans' lot was acquired, 
one-half of which was used for an agricultural field and 
the remainder for an experimental farm. 

"Of course the usual pranks were played during that 
period. The one however that I recall as most unusual was 
the theft of a duck from Miss Evans, and the attempt on 

143 



the part of those who had purloined the same to cook it 
in a wash basin. 

"If you can conquer your aversion to ringing my front 
door bell I would be more than happy to talk over sports 
of this nature with you further and possibly may be able 
to give you some additional material." 

The Rev. G. A. Papperman, minister of the First Presby- 
terian Church, Lockport, N. Y,, writes under date of July 3, 
1919: 

"I am sending according to your request a brief sketch of 
my impressions as an undergraduate of Delaware College, 
1 905- 1 909. 

"The years 1905 to 1909 were transition years in Dela- 
ware College. The ideals of the Faculty as well as those 
of the student body were being realized. There had been 
talk for a long time about college planning, but we decided 
that what we wanted was a Delaware College plan. Just a 
move from the general to the particular. 

"We loved 'Little Old Delaware' no more. We were tired 
of being little. No mother would love a dwarf if he would 
deliberately remain dwarfed when he had a chance to grow. 
We knew our usefulness depended on growth. It was grow 
or die. And we were far too much alive to even think of 
dying. 

"The new gymnasium was built. It was larger and better 
than anything we had had theretofore. That was a begin- 
ning. The students went out for new men. The athletic 
teams sought to give the College publicity by playing *big 
games.' The publications took on a new tone and spirit. 
The Y. M. C. A. was a real factor in the College Hfe. The 
literary societies were revived, but many engineering stu- 
dents came and the societies lost ground because of lack of 
interest. Local fraternities with a national spirit sprang up. 
New men were added to the Faculty and hope beat high. 

"The heart and spirit were willing, but the means were 
not yet at hand, although we knew they would come. We 
were in the period when the new shuffles off the old. A step 
out. A stride forward, a march upward. More buildings, 
a new athletic field, new curriculum were all constantly 
before us. A new day was sure to break. It has since 
dawned. 

"The College was like the artist pupil's sketch. It was 
small. It was narrow ; there were few living lines. When 

144 



the master artist examined it he wrote over the top of it, 
'AmpHus.' So the Master of All Learning whispered to our 
Alumni, 'Build bigger.' And before the year of 1909 was 
out we knew that Little Old Delaware would become Big 
Old Delaware and take its rightful place among the best 
colleges of the country. The last few years have realized 
somewhat the ideals of our four years. And the end is not 
yet. 

'Thanking you for your kindness in giving me the oppor- 
tunity to make this small contribution, I am, 

"Most sincerely yours, 

"G. A. Papperman, M. A., B. D." 



James Gilpin Lewis (1912) writes with the same enthu- 
siasm of undergraduate days and the old campus as the men 
of thirty and forty years earlier. He says, writing from his 
place of business at 1252 North Broad Street, Philadelphia: 

''A task indeed to pick out of those all- too-short four 
years of undergraduate Hfe at Old Delaware — years brimful 
of pleasurable incidents, of joyful hours — some one thing 
or some one series of things which above all the rest stands 
out ! Four years that I would give almost anything to live 
over again, four years that passed then so slowly and that 
now seem to have been but a fleeting, wondrous fortnight. 
My undergraduate life is something that ever will serve as 
a bottled-and-corked store of colorful reminiscences. 

"Strong is the memory of the Freshman days, the thrill 
of new experiences. Strong is the memory of meeting in 
free and clean contest those whom I knew to be my friends 
— they wore the Blue and Gold as did I — and those whom I 
learned to call my enemies — my Alma Mater's enemies. 
Strong is the memory of the pranks of dorms and of class- 
room — the cow in 'Robbie's' room (how well we loved the 
fine old gentleman without realizing it until we were gradu- 
Harter's office. Strong is the memory of the machine shop 
ated), the assorted swine, rabbits and billygoats in 'Doc' 
(how I'd love to swim to my eyebrows in its grease once 
more), of the cold drill-field and the sweat-laden air of the 
Gym, and — yes, even of 'Tiff's' terribly odoriferous Chem. 
Lab. Years never will eradicate these memories. 

"But there's just one memory that stands out above all 
the rest, and that is a memory of a picture rather than of a 
happening or a habit. I mean the wonderful old campus 

145 



with its not-too- well-trimmed lawn (who would have it 
look fresh-from-the-barber?) and its steadfast old build- 
ings framed with those wonders of nature, those stately old 
trees. I have seen the cobwebs and dropping plaster and 
leering laths of Poverty Row and of Hungry Hall turned 
into the best and most modern thing modem building craft 
could make of them. I have seen that den where my good 
friend and true, Sam Tammany, was wont to stand at the 
window in the twilight and gaze out into thin nothingness, 
where 'stude' after 'stude' had lived before him, where, so I 
am told, a grim tragedy took place many years ago — I have 
seen that den turned into a comfortable, becushioned lounge 
room decorated with the best that money could buy. I have 
seen with a glad heart those and other progressive steps — 
glad for Delaware's future and the widening of her possi- 
bilities for good — but withal there has been a sort of sad- 
ness at seeing the old place give way to the new. And so I 
say, keep that grand old campus just as it is. Save those 
great old trees to tower majestically over your children and 
mine — and our children's children. 

"Do you not remember those wonderful days in early 
spring when we all took a vacation by mutual consent? 
Yes, and the Faculty was 'most as bad.' Do you not remem- 
ber the luxury of the long, lazy twilights out under those 
glorious trees, when we gazed for hours at a time across 
the top of a stiffly posed book and never turned a page ? We 
tried to study, it's true, but the trees wouldn't let us ; they'd 
brought spring back to us. Those blessed old trees. Save 
em! 

Mr. Lewis, who has the spirit that should and probably 
does animate every alumnus as to the old campus, will be 
glad to learn that the trees are to be saved. Secretary of 
State Everett C. Johnson, in contributing to the tree fund 
started two years ago, stipulated that his gift should go to 
help preserve the linden avenue, perhaps the finest thing 
of the kind in any academic campus of the United States. 
The necessary expense of this undertaking seemed too great 
in view of demands elsewhere, but H. Rodney Sharp 
became so convinced of the necessity that this work be no 
longer delayed that he employed, at his own expense, an 
expert to do it in the most approved manner. Not only the 
lindens, but the long neglected maples and other trees of 
the campus were thoroughly cleansed, pruned, disinfected, 
and otherwise treated, in April, 1920, so as to save the 
lindens and elms for at least two generations more, and the 

146 



less bng-lived trees until new ones grow up to take their 
places. 

Domestic Economy 

Students' expenses at Delaware College have greatly 
varied in the period since 1870, as the narrative has already 
shown, but the variations are even more striking when earlier 
academic and domestic statistics are examined. A daughter 
of the Rev. Epher Whitaker, D. D., a member of the class 
of 1847, recently gave to the College archives some inter- 
esting papers contemporary with her father's period of resi- 
dence at Newark as student first at Newark Academy and 
later at the College. The fee for his diploma was $7, and 
the bill for textbooks in one term was $2.40. Tuition, room 
rent, fuel and incidental expenses for the college year 
totaled $68. Board in "respectable families" could be had 
at from $1.25 to $2 a week, and laundry cost from $12 to 
$20 a year. That was in the days, however, when food of 
all kinds fetched perhaps a third of present prices, and a 
cook could be had at $6 or $8 a month. 

It is worth while here to append a significant passage 
from Dr. Whitaker's valedictory, delivered nearly three- 
quarters of a century ago. He prophesied with the daring 
idealism of youth that this country would not only establish 
liberty at home, but extend it to Europe. In words that ex- 
press the persistent hope of steadfast ideahsts, he said: 
"The shout for Freedom will go up as the voice of many 
waters from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and the Ural 
Mountains will re-echo the sound. 

"Wars shall cease and ancient fraud shall fail, 
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale ; 
Peace o'er the earth her olive wand extend 
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend." 



147 




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INDEX 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Advance, The Del. Col 33 

Agricultural Club 94 

Agricultural Department, 

67, 70, 85, loi, 105, 106 
Agricultural Experiment 

Station 50, 58, 67, 73 

Alison, Rev. Francis 124 

Alumni Association. .95, 96, 104 

Alumni Dinner 90 

Alumni News 35, 131 

Athenaean Society 31, 33 

Athenaean Hall 15 

Athletic Association 75 

Athletic Council 75 

Athletic Statement 134, 135 

Baseball 23, 74, 135 

Bishop, W. H 58 

Blue Hen, The 34 

Bradford, E. G 130 

Bradley, W. H 58 

Burstan 126 

Bush, C. W 80 

Bush, J. H. J 138 

Bush, L. P 128 

Bush, Dr. L. P 50, 128 

Cadet Corps 30 

Caldwell, Rev. J. H., D.D., 
President, Del. C0I.40, 41, 42, 50 

Cann, J. P 80 

Cann, R. T., Jr 80 

Chester, F. D 69, 97 

Chronicle of 1918, The 34 

Co-education 39, 40, 43, 138 

Collateral Reading 57 

College Entrance Require- 
ments 115 

Commons 23, 90, 91 

Compulsory Chapel 30, 93 

Conference of Trustees and 



PAGE 

Faculty 108, 109 

Cooch, F. A 143 

Corbit, D. W 129 

Cullimore, A. R 85, 100, 106 

Curtis, C. M 130, 138 

Curtis, F. A 26 

Curtis, F. W 129 

Curtis, H. H 131 

Curtis, Minot 44 

Curtis, Walter 44 

Dare, M. D 126 

Day and Klauder 87 

Dean of Agriculture 105 

Delta Phi Hall 15 

Delta Phi Society 31, 33 

Delaware Farmer 34, 94 

Delaware Memorial Library, 

59, loi 

Demobilization 102 

Department of Agriculture. 57, 58 
Department of Chemistry.... 66 
Department of Engineering, 

62, 134 
Department of English.. 84, 112 

Domestic Economy 147 

Dutton, G. E ICO 

Elective System 62 

Emergency Fund 107, 108 

Endowment Fund 108 

Evans, C. B 83, 100 

Evans, G. G 52, 82, 106 

Ewing, Rev. H. W 141 

Executive Committee of 

Board of Trustees 105, 108 

Expansion 77, 79 

Faculty Club 94, 104 

Ferris, W. J 129 

Financial Statement 136 

Fisher, Dr. J. L 126 



PAGE 

Football 23, 74 

Fraternities, Greek Letter, 

23, 33, 92 

Frazer, E. B 76,84 

Frazer, Field 76 

Frazer, Helen H 76 

Frazer, J. H 76, 132 

Frazer, S. J 76 

Gilbert, Rev. E. W., First 

President Del. Col 125 

Gordon, Gen. W. H 97 

Graduates, Total Number... 118 

Grantham, A. E 106 

Green, The 44 

Greiner, J. E 104 

Gymnasium 75, 76 

Hamel, A. R 126 

Hatch Bill 50 

Harter, Dr. A. J., 

44, 54, 57, 61, 62, 81, 82, 94 

Harter, Hall 84, loi 

Hazing 25 

Hayward, Dr. Harry, 

70, 74, loi, 104, 105, 108 

Hersham, M. M 126 

Higgins, J. C 70 

History, Chair of 59 

Infirmary 84 

Johnson, E. C 79, 86, 146 

Kent, Hall 48 

Kirkwood, Daniel, President 
Del. Col 113, 125 

"Lady Eglantine" 72, 133 

Lewis, J. G 145, 146 

Linden Avenue 146 

Lindens, The 26 

Library 31, 32, 33, 57, 58 

Lottery for Endowment, . . . 124 

McCue, C. A 74, 105 

McDowell, Rev. Alex 124 

Mackey, Rev. W. D., 

18, 19, 21, 40 
Manning, Dr. E. W 62, 63 



PAGE 

Mclntire, G 80 

McMaster, Dr. J. S 139 

Macheret, Jules 18, 19, 30 

Marshall, Dr. G. W 127 

Martin, W. R 127 

Marvel, Dr. Emery 133 

Marvel, Josiah 80, 95 

Mather, Miss 45 

Matriculates, Whole Num- 
ber 119 

Medill, G. L 80 

Middle Period 50 

Military Instruction 30, 103 

Mitchell, S. C, President Del. 
Col., 81, 82, 86, 107, 108. 

109, no, III 

Modernization 55, 57 

Morgan, George 21, 33 

Morrill, Act 17 

Morrill Bill 50 

Morrill, J, S 17 

Morris, Hugh , 80 

Ncale, A. T 68, 70 

Necrology 126, 127 

Newark Academy, 

15, 19, 123, 124 

Newark College 124 

Newark Post, The 35 

New Castle Hall 45 

O'Daniel, J. A 126 

Old College, 

13, 14, 15, 21, 43, 51, 52, 67, 71, 
75, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, 99, 113, 119 

Omega, Alpha 92 

Oratory, The, 

14, 15, 22, 24, 42, 89 

Orchestra, College 92, 94 

Overworked Teachers 59 

Our Sunbeam 33 

Papperman, Rev. G. A.. 144, 145 

Past, Present and Future in 

Penny, C. L 66 

Physical Director 75 

Porter, E. D.. . . . . . 15, 18, 40, ii4 

Pranks 25, 28, 31 



PAGE 

Prayers 29, 30 

President's House 44 

Public School Code 46 

Pure Science 113, 114 

Purington, G. D 67 

Purnell Hall 58, 99 

Purnell, Dr. W. H., 

17, 18, 39, 40, 82 

Raub, Dr. A. H 132 

Raub. Dr. A. N 50, 53, 54 

Recitation Hall 51 

Removal to Wilmington pro- 
posed 63 

Review, The Del. Col 34 

Robinson, F. H 61, 82 

Robinson, Miss Winifred J. 

Dean, Women's College. 48, 49 
R. O. T. C 93 

Saiaries, Tentative Schedule 

of 109 

S. A. T. C 99, 103 

Scriptores Latini 57 

Service Citizens Assn 47 

Sharp, H. R., 

79, 80, 82, 84, 87. 146 

Short, C. E loi, 106 

Sigma Epsilon 92 

Sigmu Nu 92 

Smith, Dean, E. L...85, 100, 102 

Social Activities 89 

Spanish War 97 

Spanish Grippe 97 

Sports 23, 74, 76 

State Chemist 50, 65, 66 

State Farm 43, 71 

Steele, Dr. Walter 80, 100 

Strike 64 



PAGE 

Struggle 37, 39 

Stuart, Miss Carrie 90, 91 

Student Government. .24, 30, 11 1 
Summer School. 46, 86, iii, 114 

Sussex Hall 48 

Sypherd, Dr. W. O., 

58, 80, 94, 100 

Teachers' Institute 46, 91 

Teacher Training 47 

Thompson, H. B., President, 

Board Trustees 83, 134 

Townsend, Gov. J. G 86 

Vandegrift, L. C 130, 138 

Wars and Military Train- 
ing 96, 104 

Warner, Mrs. A. D 4^ 

White Clay Creek 21, 43 

Whittaker, Rev. E., D.D....147 

VVhittingham, R. N 52 

Willey, S. J 131 

Wilkinson, A. T. ...94, 109, 136 

Williams, C. P 18, 19, 21 

Williamson, A. F 137, 138 

Wilson, W. T 76 

Witsil, L. R 126 

Wolf, Hall 12), loi, 103 

Wolf, T. R., 
18, 19, 22, 50, 57, 64, 65, 66, 82 

Women's Clubs 43, 44, 45 

Women's College of Dela- 
ware 42, 50 and passim 

World War 97 and passim 

Wright, J. P 100 

Wright, S. J 100 

Y. M. C. A 33, 73, 93, 103 



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